Why taxes?

When we start to work, paying taxes seem to be so an obvious duty that few of us wonder why we must pay them or what they are used for. Some people feel unsatisfied paying taxes. Although the usefulness of taxes is not so difficult to understand, we should make it clear by thinking about where it comes from.

The birth of taxes occurred when communities had somethings to do in common. People in a group (city or country) earn the benefit of going to theaters. So building theaters demands everyone's effort. Also, city halls, libraries, parks, etc, those are common places that every citizen can use. Therefore, every citizen has the responsibility of paying some portion of their income for the public. Now that we've found out the very role of taxes: Building and serving the public. Paying taxes means contributing to the development of the nation.

Not only buildings, taxes are used to set up the government for protecting and directing the country. In fact, taxes are mostly the government's income. Therefore, government officers must serve the people as they live on their money. Moreover, citizens have the right of asking the government for their desires.

Taxes also help reducing the gap between rich and poor, since higher income pays higher tax. Furthermore, because every citizen can use public service and welfare system regardless of how much they have in their pocket, paying taxes means we help each others to live in harmony. Imagine that a homeless old man can go into city libraries to read books or magazines free as other rich ladies although the latter pay much more than the previous does. Using taxes, we give poor children scholarships to help them pursuing their education, we motivate voluntary activities to help the communities, we support the development of other poor countries.

We've come to understand why taxes appeared in our society and what they're used for. Although some people still think taxes are dirty cut from people's income, I believe that most of us accept them as our duty for the nation and our mean to help each others. Of course, using taxes correctly is another controversial problem that we should return later in other entries.

--- Posted on Aug 2nd by minhem ---

Freedom for pets

Many people believe that their pets are happy to live a comfortable life with them. I'm a pet-lover, too, but I think that pets should have their own lives, free and independent on humans. When considering pets as wild animals, we can see that for them, living together with humans in cities is not desirable.

The first trouble we can think of is that pets live in different environment from where their wild ancestors had lived. Instead of trees, sand and other animals, pets live in concrete houses surrounded by artificial furniture. Often, they are "protected" to stay in a small range of area, mostly in a house. They can't go and see the outside world. We keep them as human's belonging or prisoners. If you ever experience the strangeness of moving to live in other countries, pets are in the same, even more awful, situation.

Because their worlds are closed, some instinct behaviors cannot be done. Their have no friends, no love or mating (we don't expect our pets give birth!). Also no enemies (the only one can be thought of is cars in streets that might kill them by one hit), therefore no practicing is needed. Dog's legs that are designed for long and fast run are just used for walking with its host. The tree-climbing talent of cats becomes unnecessary. Furthermore, their immunity against of diseases may disappear. In fact, pets get ill easier than their wild counterpart.

The best thing we can supply them is food. People think that they give their pets food with enough nutrition and tastiness. I think pets' liver is designed to consume natural food than that is made in factories or well-cooked. Actually, some problems occur when pets' consuming organs are acquainted with well-cooked food. Their noses still stimulate them to eat fresh flesh, but the stomachs no longer accept that kind of food anymore.

Let's see what pets think about their lives, if they can meditate as humans. They may realize that they are leading extremely boring lives. What do they do for their whole lives? Almost nothing rather than walking around. We don't expect our pets do anything special. Just staying still as ornaments is enough to make their hosts happy.

What can we conclude after discussing so far? If human beings have the right to be free, so do animals. We should NOT keep pets. They are definitely not happy belonging to us. Let show how much we love them by sending them back to nature where they deserve to be.

--- Posted on July 29th by minhem ---

"Man-Eatings Cats" - Haruki Murakami

When Izumi and I sat at our outdoor café, drinking coffee or beer, aimlessly gazing at the boat in the harbor and at the far-off Turkish hills, we were sitting at the edge of Europe. The wind was the wind at the edge of the world. An inescapable retro color filled the place. It made me feel as if I were being quietly swallowed up by an alien reality, something foreign and just out of reach, vague yet strangely gentle. And the shadow of that substance colored the faces, the eyes, the skin of the people gathered in the harbor.

At times, I couldn’t grasp the fact that I was part of this scene. No matter how much I took in the scenery around me, no matter how much I breathed in the air, there was no organic connection between me and all this.

[…]

A week later, she phoned my office about some minor matter and we chatted for a bit. I told a joke, and she laughed. “Want to go out for a drink?” I asked. We went to a small bar and had a new few drinks. I can’t recall exactly what we talked about, but we found a million topics and could have talked forever. With a laserlike clarity, I could grasp everything she wanted to say. And things I couldn’t explain well to anyone else came across to her with an exactness that took me by surprise. We were both married, with no major complaints about our married lives. We loved our spouses and respected them. Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle running across someone to wham you can express your feeling so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been a mistake to label this “love”. It was more like total empathy.

Neither one of us lured the other to bed, but we did start sleeping together. We’d both been faithful to our spouses up to that point, but somehow we didn’t feel guilty, for the simple reason that we had to do it. Undressing her, caressing her skin, holding her close, slipping inside her, coming – it was all just a natural extension of our conversations. So natural that our lovemaking was not a source of heartrending physical pleasure, it was just a calm, pleasant act, stripped of all pretense. Best of all were our quiet talks in bed after sex. I’d hold her naked body close, and she’d curl up in my arms, and we’d whisper secrets in our own private language.

We met whenever we could. Strangely enough, or perhaps not so strangely, we were absolutely convinced that our relationship could go on forever, or married lives on one side of the equation, our own relationship on the other, with no problems arising. We were convinced that our affair would never come to light. Sure we had sex, but how was that hurting anyone? On night when I slept with Izumi, I’d get home late and have to make up some lie to tell my wife, and I did feel a pang of conscience, but it never seemed be an actual betrayal. Izumi and I had a strictly compartmentalized yet totally intimate relationship.

[…]

--- Posted on July 28th by santa ---

Private Schools

In recent years, the ever-growing appearance of private schools, along with other available forms of school, has made a multicolor picture in the education system in Vietnam. The private schools overcome the drawbacks of other previous kinds, and vice versa, which give many options to parents. The essay will focus on both aspects of the new kind of school.

The strongest point of private schools may lay in the good, modern infrastructure, including fundamental equipments like tables, chairs, boards, etc and the specialized instruments such as laboratory tools, projectors and computers. These items can meet not only the basic needs but the advanced demands as well. With such satisfactory support, there is no doubt that the students will have a fully well-equipped environment for study as well as extra-curricular activities.

Beside that, the staffs and methodology are other competitive factors. Thanks to the rich foundation, the teachers can apply many activities and methods in their lecture hours, which make the class more interesting and easier to understand. In private schools, the teachers are given more responsibilities and rights to choose their own way of teaching, which will benefit both the trainers and trainees. The teachers become more flexible and creative in imparting lessons, while the student can comfortably ask questions and grasp knowledge. Moreover, the private schools always observe their students’ progress and behaviors. They keep a close relation with parents in case of informing all issues related their children.

Although the private schools have many advantages as mentioned above, there are still some limitations that need to be considered. The tuition and other service fees may be too high for average families. This appears to be the biggest fence which prevents the popular population from approach to the high-class education model. In addition, parents should mind bad influences on their children when they go to such a material environment.

It is able to say that the model of private schools has brought the education field towards the service area, which aims to satisfy the students and their parents. As a saying goes “you pay what you get”, the high tuition is worth spending on what the students receive. And, to some extent, this model has contributed to the process of improving the education quality in the whole system.

-- Posted on July 27th by santa --

Overcrowding: If preventing the immigration wave can solve this problem

Overcrowding, overloading, overpopulation, all these common words mention a hot problem many cities over the world are facing, in which the infrastructure can not meet the basic demands of the citizens such as accommodation, transportation, etc. due to an excessive quantity of inhabitants. Although the immigration from the countryside is one major cause of this circumstance, I believe that the action of only preventing this fashion is not an optimal solution because of two following reasons.

For one thing, the immigration from rural areas is an essential process as a result of modernization and industrialization that any city has to experience then we can not prevent or avoid this trend. Because many industrial zones are opened around the cities, people tend to aggregate to factories and firms there. In addition, services and financial fields attract a lot of employees as well. No matter whether blue-collar job or white-collar one people do, cities seem to be a promising land bringing them a better life. Moreover, cities offer enormous opportunities for tertiary education and entertainments. Indeed, cities have a great special charm to all kinds of person.

For another thing, I believe that we need a coordination of many factors and policies to solve this issue efficiently, but not merely preventing the immigration wave to urban areas. We need improving the city basic infrastructure such as developing accommodation and transportation system. We need increasing the size of the city by developing the surrounding suburbs as well. If we achieve the goals, there are more houses to live and broader streets to travel, so our condition is improved gradually.

In conclusion, I believe that there are many better solutions than just preventing the immigration wave from rural areas to deal with the condition of overcrowding in many cities nowadays. This is not just because the immigration is an unavoidable phenomenon, but this one itself can not solve entirely the problem.

----- Posted on July 11th by santa -----