Taxes
“The
only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get
worse every time Congress meets.” Will Rogers
“Here
is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay.
That is the only American principle.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
“We
have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work.”
Milton
Friedman
“Collecting
taxes more than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.”
Calvin
Coolige
I
wonder how many of you were standing in line at the post office at
midnight to mail your taxes. Or more likely, waiting until 11:59 to
hit the send key on the computer to file what had been sitting there
for weeks. April 15, a day universally despised by Americans.
As
you can see above, it's not difficult to find quotes on the subject
of taxes. Everybody has an opinion. We like good roads, safe
bridges and responsive police and firemen, but we hate to cough up
the money for them. We support our military men and women, in fact we
have a little bit of a love affair going on with them right now, but
laying out the dough for them is something else all together. We
certainly don't want to bring our infirm and sickly Granny home and
care for her ourselves, but we hate paying for Social Security and
Medicare. We like the fact that our garbage is picked up twice a week
and all we have to do is put it at the curb. We like clean water and
clean streets, but we don't want to pay for them. The list goes on
and on. We want our cake and eat it, too.
I
was impressed with the rapid response of the police and emergency
medical teams after the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon. They
swarmed the site almost immediately. Within minutes, they had the
street blocked off and people herded in the direction of safety. We
expect that of our first-responders—we want them right there when
we need them. That's what our taxes pay for.
I
think what we hate most about paying taxes are stories of graft and
corruption, of elected leaders dipping into the till and living
lavishly off the backs of hard working Americans. Birmingham has seen
more than its share of that, as have many other cities in the U.S. We
feel the sacrifice that taxes place on us, and resent the use of our
money for reasons other than dire necessity.
What
we want are leaders who are responsive to us; who relate to our life
style and the difficulties of living in an affluent society when you
are not rich. Yet, no one who is less than affluent can afford to run
for office in America. We've set things up that way. Now, only the
one who can raise the most money, who is well-heeled and well
connected, is elected, and those who live in the real world with the
rest of us have no chance. Perhaps it's always been that way.
I
think tax time is a good time to contemplate the kind of society we
want. If we could all step off our party-line for long enough to
listen to one another, and to really think about the role of
government in America, we might be less rancorous about paying taxes.
Who knows, we might even feel fortunate to be able to pay taxes!
In
the spirit,
Jane
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