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.
