The Mandela Effect and Robin Hood 🏹💰
You know the Mandela Effect, where what we remember isn’t necessarily what we see now?
I was thinking about Robin Hood and the devaluation of our dollar. 💵
The story of Robin Hood has gone through a lot of changes over time, but the version that sticks in my mind is the one where Robin gets rather annoyed about excessive taxation, takes on the Sheriff of Nottingham, and redistributes some of that wealth to the poor. It feels a little bit like that in 2026. 🤔
I’ve worked as a bookkeeper since the mid-80s, and one thing about doing the books is that you see the back end of businesses, big and small. You see where the money comes from, where it goes, and all the little deductions, charges and costs along the way. 📚
People often say, “But we paid higher income tax rates in the 70s and 80s.” Maybe we did. But I think that misses something. What I remember is a time when there weren’t nearly as many hands taking a little piece of every dollar we earned and spent.
Today, on top of PAYE, we have taxes, rates, levies, fees and charges seemingly everywhere:
• GST at 15% on most goods and services, food, clothing, tradespeople, professional services and almost everything else we buy.
• Insurance, plus various levies, with GST added to premiums.
• Council rates, which have risen enormously over the decades + GST
• Water charges in Auckland + GST
• Phone and internet bills, plus GST.
• Electricity and other utilities, plus GST.
• Bank fees.
• Vehicle registration and licensing costs + GST
• Petrol taxes, duties and levies, and then GST at the pump. ⛽
• Road tolls, with congestion charging potentially another cost in the future.
• Parking charges and fines seemingly everywhere and because it's digital, you can't escape big brother. 👀
• Residential aged care, where people with assets above the subsidy threshold can face very substantial costs. And if they rent out their home to help pay for that care, the rental income may itself be taxable.
And the list goes on and on. Feel free to add to it. 📝
I’m not an economist or a mathematician, so I could be way off on some of the numbers. This is a social post, not an economic paper.
But my point is this: how much of each dollar we earn is actually ours by the time we have earned it, spent it, paid the bills and paid all the taxes, rates, levies and charges attached to everyday life? 💸
We talk a lot about income tax rates, but perhaps we should be talking about the total burden on that working dollar.
You are born, you grow up, you work and somewhere along the way it starts to feel as though you are being milked from the day you can breathe until the day you die.
Meanwhile, for many ordinary working people, it doesn’t feel as though their standard of living or the services they receive have improved in proportion to what they are paying.
So yeah, I’m starting to understand Robin Hood. 🏹
Because it certainly seems that some people have done very well out of our working dollar and that’s before we even get into senior public-sector and NGO salaries that can exceed what the Prime Minister earns.
Is tax fair?
Personally, I don’t think the system as a whole feels particularly fair anymore.
But I’m also not convinced that simply introducing more taxes is the answer.
Maybe the question should be: Are we getting enough for the money we already pay? 🤷♀️
Because if we are paying more and more, surely we should be expecting better services and a better standard of living in return.
Or am I remembering it all wrong?
Maybe that’s the Mandela Effect. 😉
