Re: No easy solution....

[vamsi@siliconcorp.com]

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    The Human equation may seem random and illogical but there is an
underlying order in our behavior.

    In the passage below, you seem to imply that the law of the Government is
somehow supreme to all others.  The law of any Government is a mere
statistical approximation of our behavior - some are blatant violations and
some are better approximations.  In such a model, a law is as good as its
enforcement or it is as good as how much it is enforceable.

    Greed for wealth is not the demon here.  In fact, for our society it can
serve as the engine for growth only if our reward system wasn't so lopsided.
What if we have rewarded someone in our society for inventing the wheel,
printing press, steam engine, automobile, airplane, transistor, rocket power,
etc.  Such individuals have every right to be "greedy" and the market must
decide how much wealth they will accumulate.

    In India this is not the case because the Government has crowded out all
such incentives.  When the Government locks out all incentives where the
population has no other way to create wealth then they will resort to all
sorts of corruption.  This concept might also explain why Americans might be
more inclined to pay taxes than their Indian counterparts.  That is, Americans
might feel that they have other means to increase their wealth than to cheat
their Government.  Also, the enforcement in US is a tad better.  In India, I
cannot say that the same opportunity is available to all individuals to
increase their wealth - hence we cheat our own Government.  There is nothing
wrong with our geed; for what it is worth, Americans are greedier but they are
allowed to express their greed in a manner that benefits the entire society -
only if the Government of India had some brains....

Sincerely,
Vamsi M.

prasad boddupalli wrote:

>       But our unsatiable greed for money, a natural inclination to evade the
> law  cannot be discounted. It might be true that the opulence of americans
> might be a factor in their paying the taxes. But how many of the rich and
> wealthy in India are upright, when it comes to paying taxes. Nothing can
> slake our lust for the lucre and we will not balk at the thought of breaking
> the law.


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