The economic stimulus is going into the Senate, and it is a dreary certainty that republican know-nothings will make their usual bleatings about tax cuts. Of course the tax cuts republicans venerate are the ones designed to reward large corporations for exporting our jobs overseas and to make sure that those who can afford to consume the most resources (gas for their Hummers, wasted energy in their McMansions, fat bonuses for driving their companies into the ground) bear the least financial responsibility for the society in which they consume those resources.

And the average conservative on the street marches in lock-step with these ideas even to his or her own detriment! When corporations are rewarded with ridiculously low tax obligations do they take those savings to reinvest in American jobs? Not so far. So excuse me if I don’t trust in the better natures of these companies and those who run them. We have seen companies approach the federal government like some kind of Oliver Twist, “Please, sirs, may we have the tax-payers’ money so we can stay in business and keep employing those tax-payers?” And then we hear that the bailout money has gone to provide fat bonuses to the very people most responsible for their companies’ troubles!

I recently un-friended someone on Facebook for the kind of subtle racism-laden “joke” that he can later claim, “What? It was about my dog. You liberals just can’t take a joke! I hate this PC crap.” Before I un-friended him he repeated the classist, racist, and damnable lie that he makes more money than poor people because he works harder and therefore shouldn’t have to pay a higher percentage of taxes than those poor people. And this person claims to be a christian. I happen to think it isn’t very christian to expect that someone who earns a fraction of what you do should be required to pay the same percentage of taxes as you. What is an inconvenience for someone who makes 100K a year is an unbearable burden for someone who makes 20K or less per year. Your decision to buy a new car or not this year becomes a “choice” between paying for food, medications, or shoes for the children. And a christian is ok with this?!

So, let’s talk about why no one should grouse about paying taxes. Taxes are the dues we pay to live in a civilized society. Taxes are what we pay so we can get from point A to point B without paying usage fees to every property owner we pass. Taxes are the price we pay for the privilege of interacting with the vast majority of US citizens who are literate even though their parents couldn’t afford private schools. Taxes are what make our government function for the greater good of the people, and that is, full stop, a good thing. Some examples of what can happen when government doesn’t function for the people anymore: anarchy, fascism, oppression, violent revolution.

I don’t mind paying the taxes necessary to functioning in the modern world so I’m going to put forth some ideas for those of you who like to whine about taxes, bearing in mind that what we pay for in taxes belongs to each of us.

Get off of my roads. State highway systems, bought and paid for with the help of my tax dollars. Ditto on the Interstate highway system. Hope you don’t have any trouble negotiating on surface streets and toll roads to do all of your traveling .

Take your children out of my schools. Oh, I realize that some of you already have. Incidentally, if your religion can’t survive your children being taught evolution then it isn’t much of a religion. And even if you manage to send your kids to private schools or homeschool them, you and they will still be forced to function in the world with people who went to public schools. Isn’t it in your (and your kids’) best interest to make sure people (like me) coming out of public schools are literate and competent. Don’t you want your surgeon and your pilot and your bus driver to be able to read and think critically?

Hope you are never the victim of a crime, because all of those tax-payer supported police officers and FBI agents? They work for me.

Better invest in a sprinkler system for your house and buy lots of fire extinguishers, because that thoroughly socialist concept known as a fire department? Yep, mine.

Wouldn’t want you patronizing the library, what with all that tax money being “wasted” there.

Are your children prepared to care for you in your dotage? I assume you invested all of your retirement savings in the stock market because of your faith in the free market system. Well, we’ve seen what has happened there, haven’t we? And since you are so opposed to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, I know you won’t miss that safety net.

And when all the rest of us decide that we are ready for a single-payer healthcare system because we don’t mind getting beneficial things for our taxes, you can just sit that one out.

I hope you are never flooded out, FEMA and the National Guard? You guessed it, they’re mine.

So unless you decide to chuck it all, move to a remote mountain cabin where you can scratch a barely subsistence-level existence out of the soil, and never burden polite society with your anti-tax, anti-government, anti-poor, anti-people, anti-children, anti-elderly, anti-knowledge, anti-safety, anti-health, nutty blatherings then you are politely invited to keep your poorly thought-out opinions to yourself.

But if you enjoy NOT living in a third-world (now politely called “developing”) country, then pony up. You have to pay your share, just like everybody else. And if your share is larger because your income is larger, then consider yourself blessed and dig out your wallet.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Living, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.