VATupdate Newsletter Week 20 2022

In the Netherlands, there’s a huge lack of personnel at the moment. There are only 100 people available for 133 job openings. And it’s in all sectors and branches the same, not just catering industry, hospitals or police departments. The major cause: consumption.

Ever bought something useless? Have a look at this movie HERE

Or at least, that’s what I think. Some time ago I mentioned in this intro that a lot of people find they have bullshit jobs. If you are an influencer on Instagram, or you have a nail-studio, or count bugs as biologist, you probably have a very valuable job with which you help a lot of people.

Well, that’s not completely fair: as biologist you help us understanding and maintaining nature and thus you’re part of the fight against climate change. If you do a dance on TikTok or have a nail-studio, you don’t add any value at all.

I might just introduce a new word here: ‘consumore’, which is the greedy need of people to consume more and more. And that’s what these influencers and nail-studios do, they promote consumption. Mostly useless stuff, for that matter. The only good side of this stuff? It’s giving us a (very short) feeling of happiness, which gives us motivation and energy to communicate with others, go to work and be kind to other people.

But because of the consumores, the demand to useless stuff only increases, which means that companies will produce more useless stuff. Which has to be produced, marketed, sold and delivered all over the world. The pile of packages with cheap stuff that is bought online is growing every day, and is growing so big that postal couriers and logistics companies aren’t able to process and deliver them any longer, or only with huge delays.

If we can stop consumore and change it to consume-less, perhaps we can turn the tide and get the people away from the useless production and sales jobs, and get them to do actually useful work. Like making the world a better place to live.

The VAT twist for today? VAT is a consumption tax. It’s initial goals was to create income for governments. But nowadays it’s also used more often to steer consumption. It’s therefore perhaps also a responsibility for VAT people to steer consumption in the right direction.

If you have any comments, questions, or ideas that you want to share with us, please send us an email at [email protected] or leave a comment under the posts of this newsletter on LinkedIn.

Want to read more on consumption, the pro’s and the cons?:

To go to the specific region of your interest, follow the link below.