Tahiti

Michael We are back! We had one week of vacation in Tahiti, and there's a lot to report, it's going to be great! We poor souls only have two weeks of vacation a year, so we really went all out: We stayed in a bungalow built on stilts over the turquoise waters of a lagoon (Figure 9). In the top left of the picture, you can see the edge of the lagoon, where the waves of the South Pacific are breaking. Tahiti is located just south of the equator and is two hours away from the International Date Line, where the mutiny on the Bounty broke out in 1789 (Figure 2).

Within the lagoon itself, the water is only about two meters deep, teeming with corals and tropical fish. Each of the over-water bungalows has a small staircase, allowing you to descend into the pleasantly warm (72 degrees Fahrenheit) water, equipped with flippers and a diving mask, and go snorkeling, which we did daily (Figure 3).

The non-stop flight from Oakland (on the other side of the San Francisco Bay) to Papeete in Tahiti took eight and a half hours. At the airport in Papeete, we were greeted with the flower garlands that we already knew from Hawaii. Five musicians played wonderful Tahitian music at four a clock in the morning, and then it was off to the immigration office: Tahiti is indeed a foreign country, not like Hawaii, which belongs to the USA, but to our very special friends, the French, who sometimes prefer not to speak English out of principle. And apparently, France near the International Date Line is no longer even part of the EU: there was a separate line for the French to show their passports, while the rest of the world had to queue in the other line. It's unbelievable what these fools get away with.

Then at five a clock, we took a boat to the neighboring island of Moorea, where our bungalow was waiting. We had to be a bit more patient than the others before we could move in, but we got the one right out in the ocean, yay (see arrow)! Most of the time, we just lounged around on the small terrace, where you could sit comfortably in the shade and read, with a gentle warm breeze constantly blowing (Figure 4).

And in the evening, we always went to the hotel for Happy Hour, where, sitting on the terrace with a "Mai Tai" or a "Pina Colada" in hand, we prepared for the end of the day.

English is indeed spoken everywhere in the touristy areas, but as soon as you venture off the beaten path, you might be met with a "Je ne parle pas Anglais!" We both studied French for at least five years in school, but to our dismay, we found that we couldn't string together a single complete sentence anymore. I myself was known for always getting a D with a tendency towards an F in French at school, so I didn't have high hopes from the start. But it went quite well anyway; with "Bonjour," "Merci," "Je voudrais..." and "L'addition s'il vous plait," we managed to get by. The whole way of life is quite un-American too; in the supermarket, you have to pack your purchases yourself, the shops take a one-and-a-half-hour lunch break, and whether you buy something or not is of no concern to the ladies and gentlemen down there, who mostly wrap themselves in sarongs and shuffle around in flip-flops.

One day, we were chatting in front of the hotel in German when a tour guide approached us. He was about our age, around 24, heh heh. It turned out he was from Oldenburg! We asked if it wasn't very expensive for the locals here, after all, six small bottles of beer cost almost 10 dollars there (also in America, by the way). He said that while things in the supermarket are expensive, nature offers everything else. You can go fishing with a harpoon anytime, and in half an hour, you have a free dinner. You can pick up and eat the coconuts that fall from the palm trees. And a house there consists only of a corrugated iron roof, which is accordingly cheap. The beach is for everyone (Figure 5), all with snow-white sand. We saw school classes having swimming lessons in the ocean -- even I would like to go back to school for that!

One day, we rented a car to explore the island. It was somewhat expensive ($180 for two days, whereas in America you might pay around $100), but when I saw the car, I almost burst out laughing: a Daewoo, a Korean car, with maybe 40 horsepower (see Figure 6), and every time I pressed the clutch, we were afraid it would fall apart.

But it held up! All the way around the island is only 40 miles, but we clocked several hundred miles on the car. The gas prices were truly European, about four times as expensive as in the USA. And with the funny money currency there (Polynesian Francs), you quickly end up paying three thousand Durka Durkas. Interestingly, you just have to divide the prices there by 100 to get the equivalent in American dollars, since 100 Polynesian Francs is roughly equal to one dollar.

On Moorea (the name means "yellow lizard" in the native language and refers to an old legend), there is a special type of pineapple that grows only in the fertile volcanic soil. It is smaller than the Hawaiian pineapple, very sweet, and we even passed by a plantation where no one was working. We were told that the Tahiti pineapple is not intended for export, only for local use (Figure 7).

An American in our group asked the tour guide who the fields belonged to, but only received evasive answers. He whispered to me, "One day, this will all be a big golf course!" Every morning for breakfast, there were a few slices of pineapple, papayas, guavas, and a special type of grapefruit that only grows on Moorea and tastes super sweet, delicious!

This could have gone on forever, but after a week we had to return to the USA, as work was waiting. It wasn't that simple, though, because unlike Angelika, I hadn't left the country for three years, and our visa had changed in the meantime because I had changed employers from Blaxxun to AOL. This wouldn't have been a big deal if it weren't for the immigration authority's questionable regulation that a visa stamp can only be placed in the passport outside the country, even if all the other paperwork is already done. Without a visa stamp, you can leave the country, but you can't re-enter. Since there is no American embassy in Tahiti (the nearest one is in Fiji), Angelika took my passport with her to Germany during her last visit there in the winter of this year, and the embassy in Frankfurt renewed the stamp--miraculously--even though the passport holder wasn't physically present: a stellar moment in visa technology. However, this was too much for the immigration officer in Oakland: someone coming from Tahiti with a visa renewed in Germany but no other US entry stamp in the passport--he asked, confused, and we began to tell the story of the visa renewal, with a huge line of returning vacationers behind us. Finally, the officer shook his head, stamped the passport, and we hurried on our way--phew! Entering the USA--always an adventure.

So much from Tahiti -- and to set the mood and as a world first in the history of newsletters, I am providing a Tahitian music piece on my website perlmeister.com, freshly from a CD that we bought there in a store from a heavily tattooed man (I hope he's not out shopping with my credit card number right now): http://perlmeister.com/tahiti.mp3 is the URL you need to enter in your browser -- it takes 10 minutes to download, then the player should start running. If playback doesn't work immediately, you can download the latest software for free at http://www.mp3.com . And one more thing from the internet world: You can now read the newsletter online at https://usarundbrief.com. But enough technobabble!

Taxes and social security in the USA

Michael Back to the rough everyday life! Something I've always wanted to get off my chest: People pay taxes in America too, and not just a little! In Germany, everyone looks to the USA and complains: Oh my, oh my, how much tax do I have to pay! And how complicated is the annual tax return! Over there, everything is much better and a thousand times simpler! But I'll tell you: Anyone who has ever filled out a 1040 form for the American tax authority IRS (Internal Revenue Service) will never complain about German taxes again. Although the agency is up-to-date and provides the forms on the internet, where you can download and print them at home, when you take a closer look, you come to the conclusion that the IRS employs crazy people who come up with such monstrous bureaucracy.

Our tax situation here has become so complicated--due to the extra kickbacks from the sale of my books in Germany--that I can no longer do the annual tax return myself. The tax advisors in the USA are also too clueless, and only tax expert Angelika can still make sense of it. For this, we have to buy a program called "TurboTax Home and Business" every year, which costs 80 dollars, knows all the special regulations, and can only be operated by Angelika.

The tax is divided into two components, simply put: the "Federal Tax," which is the actual income tax, and the "State Tax," which in our case, since we live in sunny California, is called the "California Tax." It's like having to pay extra German taxes if you lived in Bavaria! However, it should not be confused with the sales tax, which is also levied depending on the state but is collected at the store and often surprises tourists because you end up paying more at the register than what is indicated on the price tag. No, I'm only talking about the annual tax return. By the way, each state has its own state tax rate, and there are also states (e.g., Texas) that do not levy any state-specific income tax. However, the "Federal Tax" is the same everywhere.

Using a complex calculation program and space-age computer technology, I have illustrated in Figure 9 how the total tax rate in California depends on annual gross income. The stacked columns show how much of the tax rate is federal tax and how much is state tax. For example, if someone earns, say, $75,000 a year, the tax rate is still a manageable 25% (if married), but top earners who make half a million or more are at 45%.

What makes the payroll slip appear friendly, however, is that there are almost no additional deductions: dental and health insurance, which are sometimes separate in America, are almost fully covered by the employer if you have a good job. These are usually so-called "Managed Care" insurance plans, where the insurance company has contracts with certain doctors and hospitals that agree to charge only specific fees for certain services. At AOL and the insurer United Healthcare, there are three options: In the first option, you don't pay any health insurance premium yourself, but you can only go to contracted doctors--in San Francisco, this is not a problem since there are hundreds of doctors in the "network."

However, if you are somewhere remote and need to see a doctor, it is unlikely that the nearest one works with the insurance you are covered by, and you would have to pay everything out of pocket in an emergency. On the other hand, if you pay an additional $80 per month (for two people), you are also covered for cases where you need to see a non-contracted doctor in an emergency, although with a deductible. Our plan is called "Point-of-Service," as we must always first contact our primary care physician, who then, if necessary, grants permission for us to see a specialist. There is a third plan (Preferred-Provider-Network, PPO), which costs about twice as much and allows the patient to go directly to any doctor on the insurer's "preferred list" without consulting the primary care physician. For each of the plans, a $10 fee must be paid for each visit to the primary care physician, $20 for a specialist, and $50 for the emergency room at the hospital.

All in all, patient billing can be quite nerve-wracking. Most doctors somehow try to charge more than the set rates, to which the health insurance simply pays the set rate. Then, the billing services of the medical practices send reminders to the patients, sometimes rudely pointing out that it is ultimately the patient's responsibility to pay the full bill. As a result, the patient has to mediate between the insurance and the medical practice, and so on and so forth--it's enough to make you tear your hair out! We once had a case where such a dispute over 80 dollars dragged on for over a year. It eventually turned out that the billing service of the medical practice had submitted the case to the wrong insurance company, but by the time the case was resolved, I had to call at least five times and explain to totally clueless representatives how to do their job. I felt like I was in kindergarten.

There is still a social insurance, the "Social Security Tax," which amounts to 6.2% of income, capped at an annual salary of $65,000, and serves as retirement and disability insurance. However, it only provides a minimal pension at a welfare level, and no one in their right mind relies on it; everyone sets aside private funds to secure their retirement financially. The government offers tax advantages with the so-called 401K plan, allowing you to save money tax-free until you take some out, at which point it is taxed. Amusingly, almost all American retirement money is invested in stock funds, and in the event of a stock market crash, the entire American pension system would collapse like a house of cards. But in the last thirty years or so, stocks have only gone up, and everyone assumes that this will continue for the next thirty years.

There is also a government health insurance: One pays 1.45% of the gross salary, and then the so-called "Medicare" kicks in at retirement age (65). Additionally, Medicaid provides the basic services for welfare recipients who are chronically ill. Otherwise, there is no mandatory health insurance, which results in a third of Americans having no health insurance at all and, if they become seriously ill, they might go bankrupt and become homeless -- which can be seen plenty on the streets.

Freedom of Religion

Michael Oh yes, and there is no church tax in the US as there is in Germany, as state and religion are strictly separated here. When I tell my coworkers that in Germany the church tax is automatically deducted from your salary unless you explicitly leave the church, I am met with incredulous astonishment. By the way, America also treats all religions equally. One of my favorite TV shows is the broadcasts of a televangelist named Benny Hinn.

He always performs at venues the size of sports stadiums, invites people with various illnesses onto the stage, and heals them on the spot. People in wheelchairs and on crutches come onto the stage, while the same music always plays softly in the background. The preacher touches the sick, and if they’re standing, they fall backward as if struck by lightning (helpers always catch them), sometimes twitching on the stage floor for a bit. Seconds later, they get up and are healed—-blind people can see, and the lame can walk.

You might be thinking, "Yeah, yeah, Michael is rambling again," but I'm telling you, this is the truth. Anyone who visits us, I'll gladly show it to them-—I just need to turn on the TV. But what’s far more important: this is considered a completely normal religion. Every donation to the preacher (and they always display the toll-free number you can call to donate) is tax-deductible, just like contributions to any other church.

That’s why Americans find it completely incomprehensible why the Scientology sect is so heavily persecuted in Germany. Here, there's a fundamental law-—actually one of the "Amendments," an addition to the Constitution, the "Grundgesetz" of the USA—-that every religion, no matter how crazy it may seem, is equal under the law and untouchable. Although similar wording exists in the German Grundgesetz, it’s not taken nearly as literally.

Anyone who wants to see the faith healer in action should check out http://www.bhmm.org online and watch the videos with the RealPlayer software, which is available for free at http://www.real.com -— worth a look!

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