Random Thoughts

April 21, 2004

On Taxes

Several years ago, some very conservative friends of mine said something which seemed quite startling at the time. They said they were happy to pay their taxes to Uncle Sam each year.
Why? “Because it‘s the price we pay to live in a free country,“ they said.
I‘ve carried that thought with me ever since, and whenever someone spouts off with some “poor me“ drivel about paying their taxes each April 15, it carries me back to those words and the thought that taxes are what it takes to keep our national “home“ in good repair. The roads, the hospitals, military protection, police & fire, sewer, schools, public health, you name it. It seems a miracle that we have all of these things, even if I do have to cough up 28% of my income each year (or whatever it is), along with the 6% sales tax, gas tax, property tax, school tax, tax tax, and whatever other wealth of taxes there are out there that drain our wallets.
And funny, but this year I heard far less grousing about taxes on April 15 from the usual commentators on TV and radio or in the press. In fact, I even heard astonishing reports (on NPR of course) of people actually defending taxes and castigating the many irresponsible politicians who use the tax issue as a punching bag for their own personal gain -- even if it means putting our country and its schools, bridges, hospitals and highways in jeopardy.
Of course, criticism of taxes is also a good thing, because Uncle Sam‘s fingers do get itchy at times. During World War II, taxes rose to levels which might be the envy of even a communist country in order to rid the world of fascism. And we can‘t forget that the very existence of our country had its roots in a tax revolt: The Boston Tea Party of 1773 was a reaction to simmering rage over the British King George III‘s hated sugar tax as well as the Stamp Act tax which set a cruel tariff on any printed document, ranging from newspapers and bills of sale to playing cards. When the king set up a monopoly on tea (the top drink of the day) for the East India Company, 150 Boston patriots went bananas. They dressed up as Mohawk Indians and boarded three ships in the harbor. They spent the next three hours knocking open barrels of tea with their hatchets and dumping the contents into Boston Harbor under the eyes of the Royal Navy.
So it‘s good to have critics of taxes as a balance beam to keep things from going too far out of hand, à la King George. But on the other hand, how far is too far? How much do tax muscle do we cut before we‘re cutting the bone of our infrastructure?
Somewhere in the American mass subconscious, perhaps we‘ve come to the realization that any more tax cutting may be cutting our collective throat. An Associated Press report on April 14 noted that, “By almost a 2-1 margin, Americans prefer balancing the nation‘s budget to cutting taxes... even though many believe their overall tax burden has risen despite tax cuts over the past three years.“
Many would no doubt disagree with such love-your-taxes heresy. After all, promises to cut taxes are a perennial way to power for politicians such as George W. Bush. This election, however, perhaps Sen. John Kerry will have more of an edge with his promise to go after the many unpatriotic, tax-dodging corporations which claim their headquarters at such offshore tax-free havens as Aruba while enjoying all the privileges and protections of American citizens.
Those who really hate taxes should remember that there are many tax-free paradises on earth where citizens don‘t pay a dime. They are places such as Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, the Congo and Haiti.
True, you would have to live under the dictates of 30 machine gun-toting warlords in the anarchy of Somalia, but you wouldn‘t have to give up a single nickel for taxes. And you‘d have little or no access to hospitals, clean water, police and fire protection in the Sudan or Haiti, but you could live as a virtual Silas Marner, secure in the thought that no child was getting your hard-earned money to support the local school system. And while 8% of Ethiopians suffer from the easily-treated disease of leprosy, an even higher percentage are fatally ill with hepatitis or AIDS -- but on the flip side, they don‘t pay any taxes other than what some tribal street gang can carry off at gunpoint.
Funny, but it seems likely that most of the citizens of the African, Asian and other non-tax-paying countries would trade places with the tax rebels of America in a heartbeat. They’d gladly pay their taxes to live among us overtaxed Americans, and count themselves as the luckiest people in the world. It‘s a strange world, isn‘t it?