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The Stupid Tax | tha st•oo•pi•d taks |
noun
Definition: Money you end up paying because your inexperience, optimism, or naivety makes you really stupid.
Have you ever paid the stupid tax before? After living in a few foreign countries my wife Lisa and I have paid our fair share of the stupid tax around the world. There was the time we booked tickets on two different airlines arriving and departing through Singapore with only a 30 minute layover only to learn on arrival that the airlines operated out of different airports…can you say “missed connection.” Or the time we ended up paying for a 5 minute $50 cab ride in Kuala Lumpur (although it was in a Mercedes).
My “favorite” stupid tax story happened when we lived in the Philippines. After living in South Korea for a year without a car and only seeing a tiny bit of beautiful Jeju, the “honeymoon island” that we were living on, we made buying a car one of our first orders of business once we arrived in the Philippines. When looking around at other foreigners it seemed that everybody owned horrifically beaten down and expensive used cars, and we figured it must just be common to own a crappy car. One day when discussing where to get a car, a funny looking American with a broad-brimmed hat came over and introduced himself to us after over hearing our conversation (stupid tax red flag). Sensing our lack of wisdom, the next day he stopped by with what looked like the van the Libyan terrorists used from the original Back to the Future, you remember the guys who shot Doc at the Twin Pines Mall in Hill Valley?
“I always tell my students — fail quickly. The quicker you fail the more chances you have to fail at something else before you eventually maybe find the thing that you don’t fail at.”
The Liteace, as we affectionately called it (actually that’s because it was a 1993 Toyota Liteace), became our completely untrustworthy ride for the next year. Peaking at a top speed of 100 km/hr (going down hill), and with an engine that sat right between the driver and passenger seat and made the entire van warm up like the inside of an oven, we officially had wheels. I guess since everybody had a crappy looking car, I figured we’d have the worst. As the son and brother to two mechanics you’d think I’d know to bring the van somewhere to have it checked out, and I’d maybe haggle with the guy selling it, but instead that was the day I spend $4000 on a car that was worth $1000. Oops. Over the next couple of months the Liteace overheated, needed a complete engine overhaul, and many other problems. That’s the beauty of a stupid tax, just when you think you’ve paid it, you end up paying a little more.
If you look closely you might be able to see the Libyan terrorist inside who shot Doc. Actually this is just a picture of a Liteace I found online, our’s was classier with a Calvin emblem (from Calvin and Hobbes) peeing on gas tank door.
If you’ve paid the stupid tax you know the painful sting of realizing whatever deal you thought you were about to bag, you’re actually about to pay double the price. It would be safe to assume that I regret purchasing the Liteace, but that’s where you’d be wrong. The Liteace was a waste of money, but invaluable in teaching me how to fail and learn. Sometimes in education or design we call this failing forward. It reminds me of the Freakonomics podcast I heard the other week about the value of failing.
In it Steven Levitt, Economics Professor at the University of Chicago states, “I always tell my students — fail quickly. The quicker you fail the more chances you have to fail at something else before you eventually maybe find the thing that you don’t fail at.” Although Levitt is arguing more here about the benefit of understanding what your bad at and moving on, it’s also worth commenting on how failing often allows us to create an intimate collection of life lessons that will lead us in the future. The Liteace was a bad vehicle, but has played an invaluable part in helping me understand what to think about when buying a vehicle in the future.
The same could be argued about students pursing an entrepreneurial project based on their own inquiry. I’ve heard many teachers argue that if they allowed their students to do inquiry-based learning the student would end up getting nothing done, or their idea would completely fail–or in other words they’d end up paying a huge stupid tax. Of course, these teachers might be right, but as those students move forward it’s likely they won’t make the same mistakes again as they refine their objectives. After all whose to say that failure, buying a lemon-of-a-van, or paying the stupid tax, can’t be the most pure life lesson and learning a student will ever receive?
So when was the last time you paid the stupid tax?
