Paying taxes like getting your teeth cleaned
I heard a caller on the radio ask a city council candidate what he would do to reduce taxes if he got elected. I don’t remember his answer because at that point my morning mind was filled with its own questions: Why does this caller expect anyone to be able to lower taxes when costs keep going up? What services is he willing to do without? Trash collection? Recycling pickup—not an absolute necessity (my sister lives in Maine and has to drive her recyclables to the dump)—but a helluva convenience. Safe neighborhoods and clean drinking water? How about nice parks and paved streets? What about schools where every child, regardless of income, ethnicity or social status, gets a good education that enables him to read, write, do math, and best of all, get a job so he can pay taxes too. How much is that worth?
The thing is I’ve been paying taxes since I got my first real job at 16, my first car (a very used 1967 Cougar) at 17, and my first home at 26, and believe me, I don’t enjoy giving up my hard-earned money anymore than you do. But I do enjoy the services; they directly impact my quality of life (and yours), and they provide us all with a community that has a future. It’s like going to the dentist to get your teeth cleaned: you don’t want to go (that horrible scraping), but you do because you’ve got one set of teeth and you have to take care of them. We pay taxes to take care of our community. The way I see it, people would feel a lot better about paying taxes if we felt government was efficient and transparent with our money. More on that later.