By Edwin Cooney
Now that tax season is over for most of us, it’s probably a
good time to evaluate our personal feelings as citizens and taxpayers.
So now that you’ve paid your taxes, do you feel more like a
citizen or do you feel, for the most part, like a mere “taxpayer.”
Therein resides the second question. Is there a difference between feeling like a
citizen and feeling like a taxpayer?
Third, have you just invested in your country or have you
been merely fleeced by it? In other
words, are you a driver or a victim of American society?
It is, of course, human nature to resist the tax collector,
but a lot of things are indicative of human nature. It is human nature to love, hate,
procrastinate, excuse, rationalize, resent, share, give and complain just to
name a few human tendencies both unproductive and productive, negative and
positive.
The ultimate question is the historical and typical American
inquiry: “so, where do we go from here?”
A lot of us for a lot of reasons (mostly having to do with
concern for the security of our individual social status and pocketbooks) are
sure that many other Americans are receiving a financial benefit for which our
tax dollars are paying. Even worse, we
believe we weren’t consulted about making such gift payments. Even worse than
that, we’re convinced that the recipients of our gifts don’t even appreciate
our financial sacrifices on their behalf.
Worst of all, we’re probably right in that conclusion.
I think the healthiest way to “...go from here” is our
acceptance of several basic truths, some of which may be rather hard to
swallow.
TRUTH NUMBER ONE. Although not everyone pays income taxes,
everyone does pay some kind of tax.
We’ve been assured by some socio/political ideologists that “welfare
queens” and deadbeat dads don’t pay taxes, but that’s false. If they smoke, drink, consume fast foods,
purchase automobiles and the gasoline required to drive them, attend ballgames
or purchase homes, they pay taxes. They
can’t avoid doing so, due to the next truth.
TRUTH NUMBER TWO. You can be absolutely sure that one of the
reasons commodity prices are as high as they are in Twenty-first Century
America is because producers and merchants who pay income taxes inevitably pass
that tax burden on. That’s the way it
should be, of course. It could hardly be
otherwise.
TRUTH NUMBER THREE. The rich and the poor have one thing in
common: they both vote for politicians who tell them what they want to hear
about taxes. People with a comfortable income
want to be told by their elected representatives that they are justified in
resisting taxes in order to preserve their “pile.” Even more, politicians assure them that they
will assist them in that effort even if it means shutting down the government
to make it happen. The poor and those less well off want to be
told by politicians they elect that there are resources out there that can
alleviate their poverty and that the first responsibility of progressive
government is to secure the well being of those less well off.
TRUTH NUMBER FOUR. The rich and the poor are permanent
elements of society. We need rich people
and the rich, although they don’t realize it (let alone appreciate it), need
the less well off to sustain their status.
The medium and low-income earners in society constitute the vitally
important laboring and market forces that ultimately sustain the rich. Donald Trump, the Koch brothers, Warren
Buffett and others could never have become as successful as they are if it
weren’t for the spending power of “the masses.”
TRUTH NUMBER FIVE. Too many of us have surrendered to the
idea that success or the lack of it has primarily to do with personal
morality. No one, of course, much
notices the sins of the idle rich since their sins are usually absorbed by the
resources and mores of their cloistered societies. The sins of the rest of us, on the other
hand, are noticed and judged by an open and exploitive public.
TRUTH NUMBER SIX. The healthiest feeling in the wake of
April 15th ought to be pride. Too many of us have been encouraged to
believe that one serves America most nobly as a soldier. With all due respect to the soldier, I assert
that the citizen who sustains this, the most equitable of all human societies,
with his love, labor, constructive concern and taxes, makes America worthy of
our tears, our fears and our cheers!
Even more than the soldier, Mr. and Mrs. American taxpayer,
you are our hero. If you’d only allow
yourself to act the hero, proud, yet humble and self-effacing, you would feel
like the hero you truly are!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
No comments:
Post a Comment