Tax -Not a 4-Letter Word: No "Fear of Taxes"

I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous than “fear of taxes.” Almost as ridiculous is the backwards statement that “there’s not enough money in the city/county/state/federal budget to pay for such-and-such desirable program.

We live in social settings because thousands of years ago humanity found that we couldn’t meet all of our needs individually. We couldn’t protect against the hazards of life individually. We emerged from the “state of nature” to meet those needs.


We hire people to fight our wars, to keep our streets and highways safe, to extinguish our fires, to teach our students, to collect our garbage. I could go on and on.

Yes. The list gets longer. You want one thing added to the list. Somebody else wants another item added to the list.

But once we agree on “the list” and how much it will cost, then the logical thing to do is to divide it all among the total population and say “that’s your share,” “that’s your share,” and that’s your share.

It seems silly to me --a non-economist-- to work it backwards from “here’s how much I want to pay in taxes” --really, “how little”-- “so now you come up with what you are willing to not get from this social contract.”

Because after all, if you play the “starve the beast” anti-tax game, you wind up back in the state of nature.

To top it all off, there is an excellent Letter to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal of June 21, 2007, by H. Lake Wise of Brooklyn, N.Y. The subject is “tax fairness.” He asks of them: “How hard would it be to say ‘the wealthiest 1% of Americans, WHO EARN 17% OF THE COUNTRY'S TAXABLE INCOME, pay more than one of every three income tax dollars?’ Then at least the reader would have some idea of how tax burdens are distributed relative to income, which ought to be the starting point for any discussion of income tax fairness.”

He points out that “1% of all earners” is not the same thing as the “wealthiest 1%.”

So it seems to me that we each need to conduct an audit of what we get for our tax dollars. For example:
-Who paid for the road that the truck used in order to bring my food to the market?
-Who paid for the airport that my grandchildren used in order to visit me?
-Who paid for the park so that my neighbors who don’t have second homes could enjoy some rest and relaxation?
-Who paid for the library so that the people who serve me could become more literate?

Over-the-road trucks do it --only they complain about it. They need to compare the number miles that I drive my four-wheeler to the number of miles that their 18-wheeler is driven. Then factor in their respective weights, and tell me whose tax burden is unfair.

Immigration: Amnesty vs. Animosity

A problem with the current anti-immigration debate is that we may have allowed some wannabe leaders to take the easy, popular road, much as they seized the American flag and patriotism in the 1960s and 1970s regarding the War in Vietnam.

No one is in favor of pardoning criminals; no one is in favor of amnesty. At least not in principle. It's like sin. It's always wrong. Except sometimes, when it is worse than the alternative. (I will not get sucked into comparisons with other "sins." That merely muddies the debate.)

Anyone who takes a position on immigration without a plan on what to do with the millions of people --”illegal,” “undocumented,” “immigrants” or “aliens”-- who are here already is defrauding the electorate.

So take your choice:

Plan A:
1. Require every single American business to immediately perform a check of name and SSN of every current employee in order to determine their legal status.
2. Impose on every single American business a fine of $1,000 per employ per day for anyone who fails the check and is still on the job the following and successive days.
3. Provide a government-issued travel voucher (funded by the fines in #2) for a one-way ticket out of the country for each fired employee, including spouse, significant other, and any children not born in this country.
4. Provide federal spending for state and local foster-care programs and adoption services for U.S.-born children whose parents abandon them here.
5. Create employment agencies in key countries around the world that will match existing jobs in the U.S. with people who are in those countries and are willing to buy their own round-trip tickets, with temporary work permits.
6. Build an impenetrable and militarized fence between San Diego, CA, and Brownsville, TX.

Plan B:
Some form of path to legality, permanency and citizenship, and a guest worker program --i.e., amnesty. Not because we necessarily like it. It's just "less bad" than Plan A.


NOTE: Plan B, plus the SSN-checks and fines of Plan A, #1 & 2, makes it unnecessary to build the wall of Plan A, #6.

A brief study of American history shows the following:
Abraham Lincoln declared a partial amnesty effecting some of those who participated in the rebellion in a proclamation of Dec 8, 1863.
Andrew Johnson issued a proclamation expanding on or clarifying that on May 29, 1865.
Congress passed (and the President signed) a near-total Amnesty Act in 1872.

Why? Was it because the U.S. Government had a change of heart about the traitors who had taken up arms against their country? Or was it because it was realized that the reconstruction of the South --let alone the healing of the nation’s wounds-- could not happen with hundreds of thousands of its residents in jail or executed for treason?

Search online for a history lesson. Do your homework. Then search your soul.

Property Taxes and "House Poor" Seniors

It seems to me that reverse mortgages of one form or another could also be a solution to those "house poor" seniors who are unable to pay property taxes.

Or if not "drawing money out of the family home," why not merely encumber the property while the senior who is unable to pay property taxes continues to live in the house? It could be done through a lien, a first or second mortgage, a reverse mortgage or a line of credit, as described in your article, which would be paid back by whoever inherits the home.

"Sale/leaseback," which is done often in commercial property, is another option.

Meanwhile, the senior gets to live the life that he or she wants to and is capable of.

I see many benefits to such plans, and no negatives. Am I missing something?