It’s that horrible time of year again. No, not Winter, not Flu season, not the short days, not the fact that I can’t wear Bermudas and flip-flops every day, etc. It is Tax Season…..Booooooooooooo!
My wife Charlie is, among other things, an Enrolled Agent of the I.R.S.; i.e. she is a certified Tax Preparer. Her main business, bookkeeping, keeps track of the trials and tribulations of many local enterprises, and, truth be told, one of the objectives of bookkeeping is to make sure that small businesses pay the least amount of tax that they are legally obligated to pay.
When I was working for the County of Riverside, one of the most important tasks of that government entity was the collection of local taxes. One of my responsibilities in the Executive Office involved the development and management of a fee collection system, the proceeds of which paid for infrastructure required in our fast-growing county.
So, you could say that Charlie and I know more than we’d like to know about taxes…particularly, as Californians, because we pay so many of them.
No one wants to pay more for anything than they have to; that’s a fact of life. Particularly, when the money disappears into a giant hole (called “government”) and it is hard for the untrained eye to discern what the money is eventually used for. Many people, with limited imagination, conclude that it is “wasted”, and, therefore, they resent paying taxes. The political phenomenon of “populism” gains a lot of its support from folks like this.
As we have previously discussed in this blog, about 80 percent of the Federal budget is used to pay for Defense, Social Security, and Debt. Do we spend too much money on these items? Probably, but no Congressman will vote against them.
The evidence of your taxes at work is all about you, at least here in the United States, and particularly in California. As former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Taxes are the price of civilization.” One only needs to do some traveling in a few Third World countries to understand what that means.
These are some of the “shitholes” that President Trump was referring to when he opened his yap last week. They are places so poverty-stricken that people can’t afford to eat, let alone pay taxes. As a result, the environment in which they exist is sub-human in many respects…at least that’s what many Americans think when they are exposed to such squalor. We wouldn’t want to live in those places, and the residents there don’t want to either.
Americans take for granted the infrastructure that they enjoy. We’ve been around superior public facilities and well-run government operations for so long that we forget how we got here.
Sure, we all have stories about hitting a nasty pothole, getting stuck in a traffic jam, having a burglary in our neighborhood, or not being happy with one of our children’s teachers. But, let’s face it, 99 percent of the environment that we live in is pretty spectacular…particularly if we consider those who are unfortunate to live in the Third World.
No matter where I’ve been in this world, I’m always happy to get back on U.S. soil. Why is that? Because our country includes all of the creature comforts of advanced civilization…and we miss them when we’re gone.
Your taxes pay for this.
When you flush your toilet, a tax-funded sewage collection and water treatment system takes your waste products and makes clean water out of it. When you are done wrong, your tax-supported criminal justice system finds the perpetrator, adjudicates the matter, and puts the bad guy into your tax-funded prison system. When you’ve got to get a long way in a short amount of time, you can use a freeway or a jet airplane; the road system and the air traffic control system are tax-funded. Your children go to tax-funded schools, your community was planned using local taxes, and the not-so-fortunate members of your community, be they out of work, elderly, or disabled, benefit from tax-funded programs. On the larger scale, your federal taxes obviously provide security services both foreign (military) and domestic (Homeland Security). If you want to take some time off, your local and regional parks and National park systems, all tax-supported, are there for your entertainment.
Practically everywhere you turn, if you keep your eyes open, you can observe your local, State, and Federal taxes at work. You might complain that they aren’t working hard enough, but…everyone thinks they work harder than the next guy and everyone thinks that they aren’t getting sufficient value for cost. It’s just the way humans are.
Some of the things that our taxes pay for are regulatory agencies. These can be local building and code enforcement departments, State food inspection agencies, or Federal workplace standards enforcement departments. For example, we have agencies that enforce laws prohibiting “sweatshop” operations in the clothing industry…inhumane working conditions at barely subsistence pay.
These are typical of the sweatshops in Asia where Donald Trump’s signature “power ties” are made and where Ivanka Trump’s designer shoes are produced. We don’t allow such working conditions and low pay in the U.S., which is why billionaire entrepreneurs have their products made overseas: they can make more profit (even if they’re benefiting from what amounts to slave labor.
Personally, I have no issues with paying taxes. Sure, I’d like to pay fewer of them, but I appreciate the quality of life that I am lucky to enjoy courtesy of the many tax-supported services.
Most Americans feel that way. You can see that in the actions of elected officials; rarely do they vote to reduce or eliminate existing “standard of living” services. Quick now: Who’s in favor of poor water quality? Who wants more potholes? Fewer police? Larger classroom sizes? More smog? Etc.
Social services, food stamps, welfare? Now that’s another issue. Typically those that “have” are not supportive of services to those who “have not”. Human compassion has its limits, I guess. “Those bums deserve what they get!”, blah blah blah.
This is all well and dandy until…it’s your son who just got “downsized”, who lost his house, and has no money to feed his kids. Then, of course, those safety net services are important and need to be funded.
We should be happy that we, as a nation, can afford to pay taxes and enjoy the full benefits of a civilized country: billions of people in this world are not so lucky.
They’re stuck in the “shitholes”.