One
Taxes are not really the
price we pay for a civilized society -- in Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s, influential phrase -- for civilization is priceless. Taxes are not, for example, fees for
discrete services that might be provided otherwise, nor are taxes a
price for which there might be discount alternatives. Taxes, like government bonds,
are ongoing public investments in the material and ritual infrastructure of equity-in-diversity, which is the essence of a
civilized society for those who are devoted to democracy. Perhaps the
true spirit of Holmes' phrase is captured best in a negative formulation: anti-tax zealots would appear to believe that
civilization is the only free lunch.
Two
Taxes are not theft, but a precondition for the constitution and
intelligibility of the claim to ownership on which notions of theft
depend in the first place.
Three
Taxes are not, however annoying they may seem,
burdens on our freedom, so much as indispensable
enablers
of freedom -- and hence they are a precondition for the constitution of
the very experience of the "voluntary" on which notions of the
involuntary depend in the first place.
Four
Taxes are not forced charitable contributions, since the basic
rights secured through taxation cannot be regarded as mere matters of charity
else they are not rights in the first place.
Five
Taxes ensure sufficient equity among citizens so that the diversity also
valued by democracy does not disable the shared commitment to
democratic processes, the preservation of democratic institutions
facilitating collaborative expression, criticism, and problem-solving
and the ongoing reconciliation of the diverse aspirations of the
stakeholders with whom we share the world.
Six
Taxes pay for the maintenance of institutions providing nonviolent alternatives for the adjudication of disputes. Taxes pay to secure basic needs to ensure that the scene of consent to everyday association is reliably informed and is non-duressed by the threat of deprivation, inequity, or insecurity. And taxes pay for the accountable administration of commons and public goods for the common good without which these are violated and exploited for short-term profit-taking by minorities at the cost and risk of majorities. Far from representing quintessential state violence, taxes are the enabling condition of a democratic state facilitating nonviolence.
Seven
Taxes coupled to representation itself ("No Taxation Without
Representation") ties the maintenance of government as such -- an
organization invested with legitimate recourse to force with all the
authoritarian dangers inhering in that state of affairs -- inextricably
to the maintenance of its democratic legitimacy.
Eight
Taxing more those who profit more by their personal recourse to the
shared inheritance of knowledge and culture, to the shared inheritance
of the limited environmental resources on which we all depend for our
survival and flourishing, and to the benefits of collaboratively
maintained infrastructure, institutions, norms, trust, legitimacy, and
security is not unfair so much as a basic recognition of the fact of our
radical inter-dependence as creative and vulnerable individuals in the
world, peer to peer.
2 comments:
Did you know that under current CA tax law, I can buy a brand new hummer for our business and get a full write-off on it.
However, if we get a Prius, we don't get any deduction on it because of how backwards AMT tax rules are.
Quite so. But you do realize the bozos I'm arguing with here are the ones who want to say taxes are theft, not Greens who are making your eminently reasonable point.
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