October 31 2013
As of this very moment, I’m not paying anymore.
Come tomorrow, I’m done paying.
I’m not doing it in protest, I’m doing it because I don’t have any alternative.
I lost my job 18 months ago and using my unemployment benefits and the cash from my severance pay, I paid all my obligations – most consistently. I paid my income tax, the haratsi to DEI and immediately after my benefits stopped coming in, I filed the paperwork so that I could work as a freelance professional. I carried on, wasting the last of my money to pay OAEE [a public insurance fund for freelance professionals] every two months and I carry on paying the haratsi, given that I had no income tax to pay.
I sacrificed the last on the altar of legitimacy and now I’m left penniless, unemployed and desperate.
Come tomorrow, then, I'm done paying.
With what I have left I will try to survive – I might make it.
M.R., 39 years old.