No free ride

I had a brief debate about taxes, a couple of weeks ago, over at Words Matter with a guy named "Keepmo'money". Keepmo' was commenting in response to Jim's post about a speech made by Warren Buffet. In the speech, Buffet (one of the world's wealthiest men, and the man who brought you Geico) advocated against the type of tax structure favored by George W. Bush.

In response, Keepmo'money stated that taxes are "stealing," and even went so far as to compare the government's self-imposed power to tax with decisions made by the Nazis. He also succinctly stated that "Liberals justify this system of stealing by giving all the good things that are done with the money. It still is stealing."

Now, obviously this guy is an idiot and doesn't really justify your or my attention. However, he does express a mindset that I've heard from others: "why should I give my money to the government?" I've earned it, it's rightfully mine, and the government is stealing from me.

The simple answer is that it's not your money. By this I mean that you are paying the government to provide you with services. Just as you would consider failing to pay someone who landscaped your yard "theft of services", failure to pay taxes can be considered theft of services. Let's think of some examples.

Here's one: as soon as Keepmo' puts the wheels of his SUV onto the pavement of a public way, he owes the government some money. The government built the road and maintains the road. If it were a private road (i.e. not supported by tax money), he would most likely have to pay a toll. Tolls are another form of taxes. The less tax money that goes toward road construction and maintenance, the more toll money gets charged. So far, we're not saving any money. In addition, to be truly "fair," every road would have a toll, so that just those using each particular road are paying for it. Would this be a better system?

Here's another: education. Currently a whole lot of our tax dollars go to support public education. What would happen if we didn't pay taxes? Well, we already know the answer to this one, because we already have private schools that don't receive tax support. These private schools charge tuition. In a "tax-free" world, tuition is another form of tax.

So far, we're not keeping any mo' money.

How about safety: police and fire? These services are paid for by tax dollars. Are we supposed to pay for our own police and fire protection, like we do insurance? If we don't pay, we don't get coverage?

"I'm sorry that your uncle got shot, but he discontinued police coverage last year, so we're not going after the killer."

"Wait, what's the address of the fire? 32 Main? No coverage, let 'er burn!"

Or maybe they send you a bill. "OK, we sent over two tankers and a ladder. You got your hourly charge for the trucks, plus mileage to and from the station. We had ten men on the scene, and since it was a Sunday they get double-time . . . . ."

And just think of the fines for speeding!

This is obviously absurd, but it illustrates a point. Government provides services that benefit the public good. Education, safety, infrastructure. And in most cases, they provide them much more efficiently than a fragmented, privatized provider system would. How about national security and defense? Most conservatives consider these worthwhile endeavors. How do you suppose we would pay for these without taxes? We live in a capatilist society, people aren't going to volunteer to put their lives on the line, and defense contractors aren't going to build bombers and simply hand them over to the military, free of charge.

Maybe we could all just pay some of our own money into a pool, and we'll use that pool of money to pay for the bombers. Oops! That's a tax, just like the government does.

Unfortunately, Keepmo'money doesn't leave any contact information, so we just have to hope that he comes back to continue the debate. I suspect that what Keepmo' and most of the other "anti-tax" people really mean is that they don't want their tax money to go to social services, which they usually define as "lazy poor people on welfare." However, I think that it's well documented that government handouts to the well-to-do easily exceed those provided to the poor of this country. Furthermore, I suspect that we get favorable returns from money spent on social services (e.g. productivity gains as a result of adequate health insurance for the workforce), especially as compared to tax breaks to industry that end up in the pockets of the shareholders.

Hopefully I'll have enough time in the coming weeks to further explore some of these concepts. For now, however, I hope that I've demonstrated that there is no such thing as a free ride, and a reduction of taxes doesn't necessarily allow us to "keep more money."