At a town hall meeting this past spring, many in attendance voiced their feelings about government and taxes. In general the audience felt taxes were too high and there was too much government. But one voice offered a much different perspective. One lady courageously said that we needed to value our taxes. The meeting continued on to different topics but her words stuck with me.
No one praises taxes. First it’s not wise or popular, especially if you’re running against Washington which automatically translates to being against taxes. So I decided to come out in favor of taxes since I will never run for office.
Why am I in favor of taxes? It’s logical reasoning I learned in Philosophy 101, a class I thought would be fun where we’d sit around, generalize and just shoot the breeze. I was shocked when the professor presented a dozen fallacies of logic we had to learn and apply in these strange mathematical formula using letters; I thought I’d finished my math requirements.
Foremost in my weak memory is the rule that you can’t ascribe all the characteristics of the whole to each of its members. For example, I value the Social Security tax particularly since my wife and I both get a check monthly. But, on the other hand, I do not like the amount of my taxes that goes to the Defense Department.
So I can’t argue carte blanche that I like all taxes, or dislike them all for that matter. And I recognize that any politician who vows to cut taxes doesn’t really mean that, especially if a specific tax benefits his constituents. Or worse, one of his major campaign contributors.
This rational thinking hurts my aging brain. Except I wish more people would engage in it. Let’s take an example. No responsible politician out of office and trying to win election this fall will be in favor of a national system of health care. “Obamacare” is the euphemism. Why, who would dare run on a platform to increase the national debt which is either $13 trillion or in the neighborhood of $45 trillion if you toss in all those entitlements like, uh, Social Security? Who indeed? Why, the law passed this year will cost us $1 trillion over the next decade. Is that bad? Let’s try a comparison.
Recently I read that since World Wa II, $5 trillion of our taxes had been allocated to the military, roughly a trillion a decade. (I’ve had some rough decades so my math works.) Now I’m all for a strong military and by golly we sure have one because we can fight two wars simultaneously half-way around the world. But See my dilemma?
I wouldn’t get elected running on a platform to cut defense spending. Plenty of people would vote against me for not supporting our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines no matter how often I said I did support them and that I’d served four years in the army. Some would lobby against me for attempting to influence votes in Congress against their weapon system that will bring lots of jobs to somebody’s town or state.
But wait a minute! I’m not running for office. So what if the Pentagon gave us a B-2 bomber and let us auction it off to some country that hadn’t already bought one? Those babies cost more than $1 billion and who knows what it would bring on the capitalist free market.
Think about it. Colorado needs a billion to balance its budget next year and there must be a spare B-2 waiting for the coming season of flyovers. Yeah, that’s it! We just petition the NCAA, NFL, and MLB to cancel flyovers at all games and especially the Super Bowl. So then we ask our Colorado Members of Congress to fetch us the plane we already paid for and we auction it on eBay, delivery not included.
Hold on, you say? What about 2012? Give me time. I’m checking a few sources for the going rate on an aircraft carrier. Always think big, I say.
Bill Ellis lives in Longmont. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
