What about taxes?

Altercation reader Roger Werner of Stockton, CA:

Americans are not overtaxed and I am sick of hearing this phrase repeated ad nauseum. In fact, the belief in over taxation is a red herring begun by anti-tax groups to drum up support for their beliefs. The main problem with taxation in America is that Americans see little direct benefit from their tax dollars. Considering how much we pay combining all forms of taxation, I think it fair to say Americans come nowhere close to getting their money's worth. Considering how much money each working American adult pays in taxes I ask: What have we got to show for the billions collected? Anyone who is not oblivious to reality sees: Deteriorating infrastructure, dysfunctional public schools, an overworked and understaffed court system, understaffed police and fire, 40 million plus Americans lacking health care, a collapsing social security system, an inadequate child care system, rapidly increasing post secondary school costs, lack of a viable energy policy, no real support for alternative energy sources or recycling at a time when these are absolutely crucial, decreasing water and air quality, a general decrease in public services such as libraries, increase public use fees (on top of the taxes we pay), and a generally decreasing quality of life owing the above list of issues and others not listed.
Each issue plagues different communities differently but one or more of these problems affects most Americans regardless of where they live. I really do hate comparing countries to one another but having spent quite a bit of time in Europe, the differences in taxation and how public money is spent between Europe and the U.S. are striking. I will grant that the U.S. is the best place to be if one is wealthy but it is not so wonderful for a family living at a lower income level.

I am well aware of the argument that Europe prospered because Europeans let themselves be defended by the United States. This is a simplistic analysis that is only partly true and those who render this argument never state that the country that most benefited from this arrangement was the United States; in truth, we were really doing the Europeans a favor but simply helping them while making our own country the economically dominant player in the world. Indeed, Europeans appear to have taken advantage of our military largesse but the arrangement was equally and perhaps more beneficial to Americans. And what are the differences between Europe and America? For more than 25 years, politicians have told us that we should strive for a rugged individualism. I have always found this commentary ludicrous given the nature of modern society since each American is rather interdependent and what affects one group ultimately affects the whole; unless of course we all think it advisable to rewind the clock to the pre-industrial era. I suspect that much of this ideal is a result of Hollywood depictions of the American frontier. Fortunately, none of us lives on the frontier any longer.

Patrick Henry once said that we must all stand together or hang separately and this polemic perhaps exemplifies the true American spirit of enlightened community cooperation. It is the American sense that we are better off and stronger as a democratic unit that has allowed this nation to grow and prosper; over the past 30 years however society seems to have lost its sense of wholeness and so today we have a nation of 275 million rugged individuals who apparently don't care about what happens across the street let alone in another community or state. I think Barak Obama hit the nail on the head in his Knox College commencement address. I understand that obsessing about over-taxation is as American as apple pie dating to before Revolutionary War and there are those among us who will always oppose any taxation. It is my contention however that taxation is necessary in a modern and enlightened society, and, if a government wants the body politic to support taxation some effort must be made to ensure that that those paying the bill (the citizens and voters) get something in return.

If we tax too little, we see a decrease in complaints about taxes but also a decrease in the public services most of us desire. Increased taxation without a collateral increase in real government services engenders complaints about over taxation. The goal then should be to seek a balance between taxation and services. We all want the government to protect us from internal and external enemies but when expenditures for these services grows to obscene levels, which is where they are today, and, when other obviously necessary domestic services are suffering, as they clearly are today, such a situation also provokes anti-tax animus. I would like to see the debate on taxes include this middle ground position: Americans get too few direct benefits from their taxes, which then leads to the belief that we pay too much to the government. Is it any wonder that whenever taxpayers are polled they appear to want their cake and eat it too? They want lover taxes but more services. These polls perhaps more than any other evidence supports my belief; it also supports Massey's implication that liberal government taxed the working class too much and gave too little in return. I grew up in a working class family and can attest to the fact that as a family, we received no direct benefits from the taxes we paid but did have access to a well-maintained civil infrastructure, and decent public schools and libraries.