I was examining my monthly salary statement the other day, that peculiar document which arrives with such regularity that we have grown accustomed to its presence, much like the changing of seasons or the rising of the sun. Yet unlike these natural phenomena, this paper brings with it a certain melancholy, for it reveals to us in stark numerical terms how much of our labor belongs not to ourselves, but to that great collective entity we call the state. The figures dance before my eyes: income tax, social security contributions, health insurance premiums, unemployment insurance, and a dozen other deductions whose purposes I only dimly comprehend. By the time this mathematical surgery is complete, what remains bears little resemblance to the sum I had imagined would be mine when I accepted my position.