Hate Taxes?

As the saying goes, "Nothing is certain but death and taxes." And no one wants to pay taxes. The federal government taxes your income, the state taxes your income, they tax your food, your medications, your gas, your electricity, they tax you for owning property, they even tax your tax refunds. Then after you start drawing your Social Security they even tax that if you make too much money when you retire. What is it with all these taxes?

But have you ever thought about living in a country that didn't raise money through taxes? Let's take a look at some scenarios.

1. A city with no revenue through taxes would not be able to maintain the streets (although they don't do that great a job anyway), but somebody has to do it. Imagine the shape of our roads and bridges if they were totally neglected. Within a few years they would be virtually impassable. The solution would be that you, maybe along with a group of your neighbors, would have to pay a street contractor to fill your potholes every few months so you could get to and from work or school or shopping store. You'd probably need a second job to help pay for the work, especially after a storm or, say, a street light went out, or a tree fell across your street.

2. Who are you going to hire to provide security for your home, your car, and your family to protect them from roving gangs of thieves? Your own private guard service? You'll need to keep one around your house 24/7, and one to escort your kids to school, and one or two at school to protect them there unless the schools were locked behind razor-wire fences. And of course those guards (and you) would have to be heavily armed to help battle the bad guys. Good luck.

3. What if your house catches fire? A private fire-fighting group may be available in your vicinity, if you have the money to pay them. Otherwise you would have to construct your house out of fireproof materials, which could be costly. The fire-fighters would probably have to be paid in advance, say by a subscription service or an insurance policy. Add that to your bills for the security service and the street contractors.

4. How are you going to make sure your water is safe to drink? There are chemists for hire if you can afford one. And will the clean water make it to your house when you turn the tap? And sewer breakage? Who's going to tackle that mess? Your favorite plumber? How much per hour are you able to pay?

5. And then there are those aggravating federal taxes. Hmm. Where do I start? How much does an Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, an FBI, a CIA, and a Coast Guard cost if you have to pay your share directly out of your pocket? Well, you already do of course through those taxes. But who's going to pay them if we eliminate taxes? Or if we cut taxes so deeply that we have to lay off most of them?

6. People we elect to represent us in Congress or in the White House maybe don't deserve as much as they make, but still we do have to pay them something, even if it galls us to do so. It would help if we elected people who would be more careful with the money we send them. We could probably get by with less taxes if we elect those who promise not to throw it away on trivials, like the $223 million bridge in Alaska that connects an island of 50 people to a town of 8,000. And you wonder where your tax money goes.

7. The excellent network of interstate highways in this country are of course also supported by taxes. Can you imagine having to pay tolls everywhere you go?

8. If it weren't for the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Disease Control, FEMA, among other tax supported governmental health and emergency management agencies, we would quickly be ravaged by tainted food, poorly tested and potentially lethal medicines (more than we are now), epidemics, flood and storm disasters, etc. OK, assuming those organizations actually were under competent management anyway.

9. Big controversy but still has to be funded somehow--Medicare and Medicaid. Maybe some would like to see them funded some other way than through taxes, but without some form of public assistance, sick people without resources would end up getting treated anyway, but healthcare institutions would have to charge more to people who do have insurance or go broke and not be able to provide care to anyone.

10. Oh, another biggy: public education and loans to college students. Do I really have to go into what would happen to this country if the government ceased to fund these and we all had to home school or pay for private schools? Come to think of it, that's happening now.

11. Of course, we could still fund all those sometimes necessary government agencies, even though they do waste a lot of money due to poor management. How? Just borrow the money, as we're doing now. Of course that increases the money the country owes to our creditors (the national debt), but unfortunately that doesn't help much in the long run, because we still have to pay our creditors interest on what we borrow. One of the creditors we owe the most money to now is China. Yeah, that's a good idea.

12. Then there is the possibility that private enterprise could supply all these needed services. Yeah, right. Investors in those private enterprises expect to see a profit. CEO's expect their multi-million dollar compensation and retirement packages (even if they don't manage well enough to make the companies profitable). The millions of everyday people who work at the bottom levels of those enterprises (corporations) would end up getting the short end of the stick and probably lose their retirement packages or benefits ("too expensive" or "reduces corporate profits").

So do you still think you're paying too much in taxes? Do you like the idea that extremely wealthy people get tax breaks that are supposed to trickle down to you, but don't? Do you like paying a quarter of your income (or more) to the government, while outrageously profitable corporations have loopholes that allow them to avoid taxes, like setting up operations in countries without income taxes? The really wealthy, although recipients of the biggest tax cuts, have more to protect and therefore more to gain by paying their fair share. You can always use your vote to help change that injustice.

So don't complain about paying taxes. Just vote to be sure your tax money is spent wisely and that everyone pays their fair share. Living in this wonderful country of ours is a privilege, and taxes are the membership fee.