“Taxes are not an absolute economic evil, despite their simplistic portrayal as such by the antitax movement.”
This quotation from “The Fine Print: How Big Companies use ‘Plain English’ to Rip You Off,” by David Cay Johnston, is meant to help us rethink whether taxes are always bad, or not. Johnston makes some very salient points that taxes can actually be cheaper than going to the marketplace to buy goods in a capitalist society.
Here are a few examples:
Police: If we were to hire our own security guards, how many of us could afford that? In many parts of the world, the rich build high walls topped with broken glass and concertina wire to keep out thieves. In Brazil, the super wealthy use helicopters to transport them because the streets are too dangerous. Taxing ourselves to pay for police protection is much cheaper than having to pay for our security because the costs are spread around a larger number of people.
Other public services: The same is true for fire protection, sewer and water hookups, garbage pick up and creating and maintaining our streets. Think of parks, national, state and local. If we had to pay for them ourselves, the costs would be astronomical. Again, only the well-to-do would be able to enjoy the benefits of the nation’s natural wonders.
Public education: Our taxes go for public schools that educate all our children. If we had to pay great sums of money to send our children to private schools, again, only the rich would be able to get their children educated, lowering the standard of living for the rest of us, making society poorer. Public education provides the means to improve ones’ chances of success in the world. Perhaps that is why the Washington State Constitution made education the paramount priority of the state. Public education provides an avenue to the greater prosperity for us all.
After World War II and during later wars, the G.I. Bill paid the costs of millions of returning soldiers to go to colleges and technical schools to better themselves. The results are higher standards of living for the entire nation. According to Johnston, 450,000 engineers, 240,000 accountants, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors and 22,000 dentists benefited from the public paying taxes to support the G.I. Bill.
Accident protection: “Taxes are also a key reason why people are less likely to die in accidents than they were century ago,” Johnston writes. “The rate of death from accidents today is less than half what it was in 1902… Exclude automobiles, and the accidental death rate for our time is about a third of what it was a century ago.”
We pay for government inspectors to maintain codes for electrical installations and to keep hazardous materials like asbestos out of our homes. Cars are much safer because regulatory laws were passed and taxes paid to enforce safer car design.
In the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, 146 people, mainly immigrant women, died because the owner of the factory building locked emergency doors with chains to keep workers from sneaking out on company time. Many jumped to their deaths from windows and the roof rather than die in the flames.
Because of this tragic fire we have better building and safety codes and we pay taxes for workers’ compensation out of every paycheck.
Improved health: Taxes have increased our life spans from the average of 47.3 years in 1900 to 77.2 years today. This money comes from public health measures supported by taxes to regulate water, sewer, food and medicines for the public good.
Taxes aren’t bad; they can actually save us money.
“What matters is how we use our taxes. That is the crucial issue on which we need to focus: what we spend our taxes on,” according to Johnston.
When taxes are shifted from public service to benefiting the few favored companies who can buy political influence or hold whole states hostage to their threats like Boeing recently did with its 777X assembly line, that is the problem.
Living in a thriving democracy requires eternal vigilance to protect us from corporations who have been able to get legislation passed that reduce taxes for the wealthy while putting the burdens on the middle class and those least able to afford them. That has been the trend in banking – think the 2008 economic meltdown – and medicine, where the government has allowed and even abetted corporations to create near monopolies.
David Cay Johnston is correct. We need to quit listening to the cries of “no more taxes!” and begin to think and explore the assumptions behind that mantra. The taxes we pay can actually save us money if only we become more aware and intelligent and vigilant to watch for those wealthy and some of the poor who game the system for their selfish benefit at the cost to the rest of us.
