2014-04-16

One-Panel Wednesday: Money Money Money

The Family Circus, 2014-04-14.

Bil is sitting at his desk. Papers are spread across it and he has a folder labelled Your Tax Guide.
"Look at all these papers and numbers!" says Billy. "Daddy you must REALLY be thinkin'!"

Apparently it's tax time in America. I can tell by the way every fucking comic is about how difficult taxes are. Now, I'm willing to believe that doing your taxes is more of a hassle in America than it is in Australia, because your country is some kind of third-world dystopia, but come the fuck on. Doing your taxes is not some huge ordeal, you just have to fill out some forms. Get over it you gigantic babies.

Oh, and the number of people who actually think that earning more can be a bad thing because you pay more tax is just mind-boggling. There is no way you can earn just enough more that your taxes go up and leave you with less over all. That is just not how it works. Earning more always means ending up with more.



The Lockhorns, 2014-04-15.

Loretta is depositing a cheque at the bank. Leroy waits just behind her, next to a man who is presumably there to do some banking and really didn't do anything to provoke conversation.
"We have a joint checking account..." says Leroy. "If I don't keep checking on Loretta, we lose the joint."
Although it could pass for word-play, there is no humour in his delivery and everyone involved is just sad.



Pluggers, 2014-04-16.

Andy is at a take-away pizza restaurant.
"Hmm... let's see now..." he says. "2 small pizzas + 1 large pizza, and 2 small are 1¢ less than 1 large, so I want 2 small pizzas..."

Plugger math.

While this may seem like a ridiculous way to save a single cent, I'm with Andy on this one. Firstly, why shouldn't you save a cent? It's not much, but why not? Secondly, if you order two small pizzas then you can have two different pizzas, whereas a large half-and-half pizza usually costs extra.

The real issue I have with this comic is, how does he know that two smalls are the same as one large? Pizzas are usually measured by diameter so working out the actual area of the pizza is slightly complicated. If a small pizza is 9" and a large is 13" then the large is about 133 in² and the small is about 64 in². That's the sizes of the pizzas at the place I usually order from, but the prices there don't work out as favourably as a large is less than twice the price of a small but actually slightly bigger than two smalls.

And many pizza places don't actually tell you the sizes of their pizzas at all, so I suspect that if the prices work out as Andy claims then the smalls are probably actually significantly less than half as big as the larges. That's not to say that Andy is wrong to buy them though, just not for the reasons he thinks.

Andy is noticeably overweight and probably shouldn't be eating a lot of pizza, so if he does end up getting slightly less this way it will be good for his health, and given that the difference is likely to be quite small he probably won't even notice and will still be just as satisfied with the amount he's eaten as he would be if he had ordered more.

So what I'm saying is, nobody tell Andy that his pizza maths doesn't add up. It's for the best.

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