Crying over taxes, conservative style

Sharing the planet with people that don’t want to pay taxes is like living with roommates that don’t want to pay their share of the rent. It never ceases to amaze me how many cry-babies there are out there that just can’t stand the fact that they’re expected to help pay the bills.

Conservatives in particular wine about taxes and high prices. (I know, as I have conservative friends and family members.) Some complain more than others, but they all think they’re paying way too much in taxes.

Here’s a table of tax rates by country. Most of Europe is in the top ten and the US is 4th from the bottom. Americans pay less tax than almost every other developed country. (Denmark just overtook Sweden for the highest taxes in the world, so I have even less patience for Americans complaining about taxes than I did before I moved here.)

And they complain about gas prices too. More so lately, of course, but they have for decades. I remember people complaining when gas hit $1 a gallon. Here’s a chart of gas prices by country. The prices vary quite a bit from country to country, but again, Europe is paying between $8 and $10 a gallon. Now THAT’S being taxed. I’m not saying that’s better — I’m saying you shouldn’t complain if you have nothing to complain about.

I know it’s a shock for Americans to pay $4, but TRY to be a grown up about it. There is only so much oil, and it’s going to dry up at some point. And in the meanwhile prices are going to keep going up. We’ve known this all along — this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Which brings me to the recent response by Bush and fellow conservatives regarding high gas prices: “MORE DRILLING!” Just like a little brat, throwing a fit because he ate all the cookies. “MORE COOKIES!”

I’m very proud to be an American, and the main reason I’m proud is because of American innovation. Americans have solved problem after problem with creative and unexpected solutions. On this point I’m in agreement with my conservative friends and family members. That’s why it’s so pathetic that the conservative suggestion solution to the problem of being heavily dependent on a scare resource is to… remain dependent. So much for American innovation.

PS: In researching this post, I found this unusually sane and refreshing essay in defense of taxes and government, along with this essay on success stories of the US goverment, which includes the research and construction of The Internet.

Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

2 Thoughts on “Crying over taxes, conservative style

  1. Indrid Cold on September 19, 2008 at 7:08 pm said:

    Stan, your readers should understand that 40% of US citizens pay no federal income tax, and the top 1% of US wage earners pay 40% of all tax revenue.

    You seem to start with the premise that part of what you produce belongs to society as a whole–Rousseau’s classic contrat social. This is the essential economic difference between leftists and conservatives. The latter believe that each individual owns what he produces and shares with the government or society only by his consent. I submit that it’s acceptable for people who actually pay taxes to argue about how much they pay, and those who are have the rent paid for them have little moral basis for complaining about how much largesse they receive.

    The reasons why gas taxes are criticized are not just that people don’t like expensive gas–first, gas taxes like all consumption taxes are regressive and hit low-income working people the hardest; second, gas tax money earmarked for roads routinely gets diverted to other pet projects (what would we do without art on the buses); and third, it drives up the cost of transporting goods and is therefore inflationary.

    We agree that some amount of government and taxation is necessary, obviously. We mostly disagree on the amount of both. In addition we probably disagree on the proposition that taxes are bad for the economy and society generally. Necessary, but a drag on productivity and freedom.

  2. Of course a portion of what one produces is owed to society. No one could produce anything if it weren’t for the infrastructure, law, and order that taxes pay for, to say nothing of the educations that the vast majority of people get in public schools with taxpayer money. And, after people leave school they have historically used public libraries and, more recently, the Internet — one of many inventions brought to us with tax money. No contribution or product is made in a vacuum. So yes. A portion of what one produces is owed to society.

    Taxation only by consent? Wouldn’t that result in a government budget somewhere in the vicinity of… zero? And people that don’t pay taxes should be silent? Should they refrain from voting too?

    I very much doubt that changing gas taxes to target middle- and high-income taxpayers would stop complaints about gas taxes, but that’s not my point anyway. Americans pay virtually no tax on gas, and haven’t for decades, regressive or otherwise. This has encouraged people to buy gas guzzlers, and now the entire American auto industry is in big trouble. Taxation on gas and gas guzzlers would have steered people away from a dead-end solution, and that money could have been used to discover an alternative. Call it socialism, call it communism, call it whatever you want — that would have been the smart thing to do.

    Some amount of government is necessary, but more government does not necessarily limit productivity or freedom. For example, a socialized medical system allows workers to be both more productive and more free because, if you don’t like your job, you can seek another one without any concern of health care plan differences or lapses in coverage. Instead, many Americans keep jobs that stifle them in part to keep their health plans.

    This is even more true for startups. If you want to start a business in a country with socialized medicine, you simply do so. There’s no need to worry about trying to recruit talent with no health plan or a sketchy one. Likewise, if you want to take a year off to develop a ground-breaking idea, you can do that and your health care doesn’t disappear. That encourages innovation and progress — it does not limit it.

    I’m not saying that socialized medicine (or socialized anything) is a panacea or even that it is always preferable to a private system. But I very much question the conservative mantra that more government is always a bad thing and always curtails progress and freedoms. Government can and should support productivity, and can and should protect our freedoms.

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