It’s that time of the year again. Actually, it’s always that time of the year in the political arena. Another instance for your respective party leaders and elected office holders to assure you that there is only one way to fix most of our problems. Fortunately, regardless of the problems that are plaguing the nation, the solution is obvious to these forward looking Democratic or Republican luminaries. The solution of course is to reduce taxes. If we reduce taxes, the ship of state will right itself and we can all look forward to smooth sailing on our journey to peace, plenty, and prosperity.
Now, I am as big a proponent of paying as little in taxes as the next person, maybe even more than most; but hearing a politician tell me that they promise to work vigorously to reduce my taxes and thereby fix any number of social and national ills is not inspirational. It does not convince or even motivate me to want to vote for a particular candidate. Actually, it tends to prompt me to question the intellectual soundness of the politician. So what is the advantage to the politician to be constantly stumping the “Reduce Your Taxes” slogan?
It’s the electorate. Both parties have learned that substantial percentages of their bases and of the non-aligned independents are attracted to and respond to this Pavlovian tolling. Ring out that phrase at every opportunity and the party faithful will open their checkbooks, the media will sound-bite the utterance and replay it over and over, and voters will navigate their way through the voting booth for the opportunity to pull that lever to receive their conditioned reward. Add to this that the political pundits will be pointing out how the other side is deceptively planning to, or will have no choice but to, raise your taxes to fund their plans, and we have the perfect storm of positive and negative reinforcement.
If the politicians are unlucky, you might think about their message, and question whether it makes any rational sense. Thinking scares the hell out of politicians, whether it is on the part of the voters or if it is being required of them. This is because it would mean that they actually have to understand the reality of events and issues that affect the people and our society. This is not something that politicians what to have to waste their time on. It does not increase their political power, it does not line their pockets, and it does not require their ideas, proposals and positions to be better than their opponents.
Taxes are not the source of the problems that are the real issues and questions that America has to confront. Taxes may be a consequence of those problems and issues; but our taxes are just part of a cause-effect relationship within our Governmental system with the taxes being the effect, not the cause. The singular and sole purpose of taxes is to fund the function and operation of Government. So if a politician is telling you that your problems will magically vanish if you allow them to reduce your taxes, then why don’t they just tell you what they are really proposing to do? And, by reducing taxes, I mean actually reducing the total amount of your income that the Government takes from you. I don’t mean reducing say an income tax, but adding fees, surcharges, registrations, fines, duties, or other monetary acquisition forms that simply replace the manner in which you are taxed.
The issues that we, the electorate, need to attend to are what the politicians are planning to have the Government responsible for delivering that determines if our taxes are too high or too low. Now don’t go all postal here. There are circumstances and conditions where we should all recognize that our taxes are too low, or that we have demanded that the Government do something that we apparently are too stupid to see that we cannot afford. Taxes are after all nothing more than our collective budget to pay for what we have endorsed via our elected officials.
Our problems are not unsolvable. Our social issues are not beyond our ability to address. And our ability to pay for our aspirations do not exceed our means. We just have to be responsible to ourselves and accept that what you want you must be willing to fund, or you must be willing to go without.
Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, or an Independent, you have bigger problems to deal with than that your taxes to high. In fact you have one really big problem. If you don’t know what the problem is, and don’t try and understand the problem, then you will continue to respond to that Pavlovian bell the politicians have trained you to attend to and to behave has they want you to. Or you can choose to do what a member of a free society needs to do and step up to your responsibility.
Our problem is not that we pay too much. Our problem is that we pay too little attention to what we are asking for and expecting from the Government.
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