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Pay your dues
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Part and parcel of my post yesterday about Work, Richard Conniff raises the subject of government spending, but in a whole new way. He suggests that nobody likes paying their taxes because the word “tax” has so many bad connotations:
I propose we stop saying “taxes” and start calling them “dues.”
I’m perfectly fine with the negative connotations of the word “tax.” Taxes are necessary, yes, but they are a drug to the recipient, and I don’t want to make drugs more appealing. ”Dues” has the connotation of club membership, though, with benefits and privileges and responsibilities, which isn’t far from the bond we Americans have.
Instead of denouncing taxes, politicians would do better to appeal to the patriotic corners of our hearts that warm to phrases like “we the people.” “Taxation” is a throwback to the time when kings picked our pockets. “Paying my dues,” a phrase popularized in the jazz music world, is language by which we can stand together as Americans.
Maybe if we start calling them “dues,” we can have a little more say in where the money goes.
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A matter of life
Better yet, let’s call them “investments” ss in we are going to “invest” in the future by spending more on - enter favorite government program here.
Investment in government is, for the most part, investment in the people. Government makes all of our lives easier and most of them better, in thousands of ways each day.
It’s not free and we take for granted most of its benefits.
But as I sit here in a small city, looking out on a public school playground, where 2 aides daily help 4 autistic children play, hearing the municipal trash trucks go by, using electricity provided by one set of wires at reasonable rates,
not worrying about llama setting up a dog food factory next door, or a roving band of thieves breaking in, I am glad it is there.
All of these are “government programs” and all of them benefit all of us.
Of course, these are the guys (with one notable exeception) most determined to demonize government and avoid taxes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16wall.html?hp
I guess I don’t mind taxes, and would gladly consider them dues, when I think they are well spent and well managed. My local taxes are high, but I feel that is “paying my dues” and don’t complain about it. I’m sure money is sometimes misspent, but on the whole I’m perfectly content.
But the massive fraud, corruption, and mismanagement on the federal level leaves me despising those taxes, as a man whose pocket is picked by the king. From a senseless and unjust three trillion dollar war, to billion dollar bailouts of troubling industries suffering the effects of their own greed, to intentional inefficiency in government agencies in order to receive more money, to government employees abusing their work credit cards to buy iPods and lingerie, federal money is badly misspent.
I suspect the massive amount of money shoveled through the unwieldy bureaucracies makes people feel like it belongs to no one. It becomes just numbers on a screen, with no connection to anything of value of substance.
I have the opposite reaction to the term “dues.” The last time I paid “dues” was in Cub Scouts. I hated the Cub Scouts and from that time forward I never joined another association until recently, when I joined the National Association for the Self Employed. Of course, just like in the Cub Scouts, I got nothing for my “dues” so I quit that too.
I don’t want to pay you any kind of “dues” or “taxes” unless you got an army to back you up.
I don’t really mind paying taxes because I understand the need. It does get a little irksome that 25% of the population pays 85% of the taxes, and that 50% pay virtually nothing, but that’s democracy. People will always vote themselves a free ride. I’m not really for the flat tax because that would be a significant burden on the poor, but just making it a little less skewed would be fair IMO.
“I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.” ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be borne by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to those expenses. ~Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.
–Edward A. Filene
The idea that some people would pay half of their estate, after some substantial exemptions, to the federal government seems to me entirely appropriate.
–Bill Gates Sr.
Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.
–Thomas Jefferson
Of course the truth is that the congresspersons are too busy raising campaign money to read the laws they pass. The laws are written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty much any wording they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you’d find at least one sex scene (”‘Yes, yes, YES!’ moaned Vanessa as Lance, his taut body moist with moisture, again and again depreciated her adjusted gross rate of annualized fiscal debenture”). ~Dave Barry
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss. ~Robert Heinlein
I don’t necessarily like to pay taxes but as a self employed farmer for most of my life I have always felt that if I could make enough to pay some tax it was a pretty good year. I think the tax cuts have benefitted the economy by putting more money into circulation and less (percentagewise) into the government coffers. In the end the government was richer for it.
My most hopeful wish would be that the government would spend less on things that should not be federal issues and let the private sector, locals and state fund it more appropriately.
We are all well-trained to make sure our tax returns are post-marked by midnight April 15. (I believe, to be perfectly correct, that should be midnight, April 16.)
So what happens if someone slips theirs in the mail on their way to work on the morning of the 16th? I read that the penalty for filing late is something like 5% per month added on what you owe. Or maybe it was 5% of one’s total taxes for the year?
But what about if it was just a matter of those extra 8 hours or so?
You know, we could put a major dent in the deficit if the money spent on political campaigns was taxed by the federal government. It’s obscene the amount of money that political candidates throw down the hole of politics. I don’t think it’s money well spent, especially if your candidate loses.
Liberals (excuse me, that’s “progressives” now, isn’t it) seem to think that if something they like (i.e. exorbidently taxing other people for programs that cause greater havoc than the original problems) isn’t giving a good result, the ’solution’ is to rename the act, and spend more money (taxed from the ‘rich’ - which means everyone over the poverty level) doing the same failed things.
Taxes I don’t mind.
It’s the ignorant, wasteful, useless, initiative destroying, profligate, agenda driven spending that results in overcharging, lost and stolen money that’s now lining peoples’ pockets and retirement accounts that really bugs me.
I’ll pay for what is really needed and for that which produces visible/tangible improvement in something that requires improvement. All the rest might as well be flushed down the porcelain convenience.
There is no product or service that the federal government can provide that cannot be provided in higher quality, greater quantity and service for much less cost, hassle and waste by private enterprise.
The more we let these elitist spendthrifts, passing themselves off as our elected officials, tax us the poorer we all become, the more content and numb we become to poor; quality, return on our investment and acceptably lower and lower levels of performance. The next thing you know, while they are getting rich and avoiding the ills that befall us, we will lose control of our elected officials. The worse they perform the more we will want them re-elected.
Before you know it, it won’t make any difference who we elect because they will be all the same. They will become our slave masters and we will hail them for the worse slop they will swill our way tomorrow and the next day.
We will forget the thought that possibly we let these fools take advantage of us and that we are to blame. Instead, we will blame them, but not blame them enough to punish them in any way. We will re-elect them again and again while we slit our own throats knowing we are finally doing the right thing for once.
They will not morn or miss us - nor should they.
I agree with paying taxes. I don’t agree with people being seen as cash cows. The amount of hatred aimed at wealthy people is astonishing. What’s more, the hatred is unquestioned for the most part. There is no gratitude towards the tax payer, and that is a problem. Everyone here needs to realize that 1% of the American population pays 40% of YOUR freight.