Well, tax day is in the books for another year, and I commemorated the heralded day by covering a Tea Party rally here in town, one of many across the nation.
But I have found at least one commentator who couldn’t wait for the day, and here are his five reasons:
Here, then, are the Five Reasons I Totally Love Tax Day (and Why You Should Too):
1. Tax Day Forced Me to Get My Fiscal Shit Together … (This is self explanatory)
2. Children, It Turns Out, Are Extremely Fragile
This hadn’t occurred to me until I had two of my own. I now spend a lot of time worrying about stuff that I never used to worry about. Such as: the quality of my drinking water and food and local public schools and parks and playgrounds and roads. And thus the notion that my taxes actually pay for things required by my fragile children has managed to burrow its way through my thick American skull. Paying a small portion of my income for these collective benefits is not only a basic civic duty, in other words, but it is in my interest.
3. George W. Bush Is No Longer President
It’s hard to pay taxes, particularly federal taxes, when the administration in power is disinterested in governing. Or, more precisely, when it views government’s essential function as an enabler of corporate greed.
I’m not suggesting that I’m thrilled with Barack Obama’s leadership. He’s proved a total moral weakling, frankly. But I do applaud his basic goals: to make healthcare more affordable, to rein in the financial system, to create a green economy, to spend more on education and less on giant weapons systems.
4. Anything the Tea Partiers Are Against, I’m For
It’s become mainstream media practice to refer to the Tea Party as a “movement.” I would characterize it in slightly less heroic terms: as a series of highly publicized tantrums.
Of course, people have every right to drive (on public roads, paid for by taxes) to a meeting place (usually a public space, paid for by taxes) and to congregate to express their hatred for taxes, along with reproductive rights and gun control and anything else Barack Hussein Obama might favor. But to call these gatherings a coherent or rational response to the current administration is laughable. Obama has, after all, lowered taxes for most Americans, just not the rich ones.
The Tea Partiers represent the aggrandizement of paranoia, rage and self-pity into a political agenda. It is a “movement,” created by for-profit demagogues whose sole mission is to build audience share at the expense of honest debate about our common crises of state. Its mindless and violent hatred for Tax Day stands as one of the best reasons to love Tax Day.
5. I Believe in Playground Justice
Because I have two small children, I spend a lot of time at playgrounds these days. The rules on the playground are simple: you share. I tell my 3-year-old this all the time. “Can you share?” I say. And, “Big girls need to learn to share.” And, “I’m serious, Josie, if you don’t share we’re going home.”
This doesn’t make me a socialist. It just makes me an adult, someone who recognizes that the pursuit of happiness in the midst of limited resources requires sacrifice.
Tax Day is our annual reminder of this fact. It reminds us that one of the prices of citizenship in these United States is the levying of taxes, to provide for all the stuff I’ve mentioned above, along with, you know, a common defense.
I would be happiest, as a taxpayer, if my return came with a survey, so I could check off those items toward which I wanted my taxes devoted. But that’s not how it works. How it works is, if you want to live in America and partake of its bounty — plentiful food and water, shelter, safe streets, schools and so on — you pay your share. If folks don’t like that, they can leave.
A fellow coworker seems to never tire of saying that paying taxes is one of the most patriotic actions a person can take. If you don’t pay taxes, things don’t get done, plain and simple. No fire departments, save the volunteer ones. No police forces. No public K-12 schools. No public colleges. No Medicare or Medicaid. No Social Security. No health departments. No post offices. No federal student loans for college. No public defense. No intelligence agencies. No state or national parks. No roads or bridges. No repairs to roads or bridges. No agency to regulate the skies to ensure planes don’t crash into each other. No agency to demystify the various objects in space that, in previous generations, garnered plenty of worship from folks who didn’t know, in fact, that a large star of hydrogen gas didn’t really need or care for our many praises or sacrifices.
I could go on, but these are all entities for which we pay taxes. In my more libertarian moments, I do sympathize with the ideal of being self-sustaining both individually and as a society. But I’m afraid that “ideal” is as far as we can take it at this point in our history, at least societally, because long ago we decided as a nation to set up a system of laws and regulations and not to be free-ranging communities. It’s also just an ideal because not everyone in a society is healthy and well-educated with plenty of money. No matter how much less government intervention we seek for the nation, we will always have less fortunate folks among us. I can’t tell whether a complete rollback of history is the ultimate goal of the Tea Party crowd or if the movement simply seeks to raise awareness, but regardless, there’s plenty of irony to go around at these rallies.
For instance, one recent sign that I saw read, “Balance the Budget | Limited Govt | Strong Defense | Cut Taxes.” Now, how do you suppose we could have limited government and lower taxes and also a strong defense? Cut every domestic program other than defense funds? Beats me. This makes me wonder: If we took protesters’ advice and started trimming, and suppose some of that budget-hedging started to tap into Social Security, a government program that has many Tea Partier benefactors, where would the outcry be? A New York Times reporter posed this sort of dilemma to a rallier with stunning results. Here’s an excerpt:
When talking about the Tea Party movement, the largest number of respondents said that the movement’s goal should be reducing the size of government, more than cutting the budget deficit or lowering taxes.
And nearly three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.
But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.
Others could not explain the contradiction.
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.”
She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”