Is It Okay to Hate Taxes?
Well friends, it’s finally April 15th, which means it’s a public holiday if you live in Massachusetts or Maine, as well as the running of the 128th Boston Marathon and my friend Sarah’s birthday (don’t worry – I already texted her). But for most American citizens, that date is associated with one thing: the filing of your income taxes for the previous year.
Of course, your taxes have been done for months now. And if you are the type of earner who will even get some money back, good for you – I’m not even going to tell you whether you should spend or save that money. But even if you end up getting a check instead of writing one, I am sure that neither of us knows many people who enjoy this ritual – especially the no-refunders.
Now, there seems to be enough chaos in the political landscape that the future of tax codes seems to be a persuasive election decision issue for few but the very, very rich. But with interest rates sky-high, the current cost of living at peak levels, it seems that almost nobody – even those with no chance of ever going anything like broke, even if they lived five hundred years – is unruffled by the prospect of having less money. So Is It Okay to Want to Pay Less in Taxes?
While I think we as a society tend to be overly worshipful of the wealthy, we also frequently swing toward flimsy arguments to demonize them. That they don’t know they value of things, or don’t have to work very hard (or ever, in the cases where wealth has been passed down). They don’t have struggles like the rest of us (probably somewhat true); they don’t have struggles at all (definitely not true). Because everyone has their own experience with money in a way that we don’t with, say, notoriety or prodigy-level skill, it can be easy to forget how we get tripped up when we attempt to judge people by what we (or think we) would do under the same conditions.
But what we are sure of is that one common argument against more (or merely higher) taxes is that people want “less government,” more freedom to make their own decisions, to pursue (and rely on) their own enterprise. Sounds reasonable. However, this invariably reminds me how much we collectively idealize not asking for or needing help; how we rhapsodize about “bootstrapping” and are proud to be self-made, and lately have enjoyed deriding nepotism (though I think this may stem more from Gen Z’s occupation with the perks of fame than the obstacles to true social justice, ahem) and even picked apart the concept of “luck.” So those tax-haters aren’t totally wrong: how could a culture consistent with this scrappy, entrepreneurial self-concept want a government that obligates you to surrender so much money that’s rightfully yours? Piles of money are just reward for all the hard work society told you to do in order to fulfill your American Dreams – right?
Well, the equation seems to rebalance once you have more than you “need,” the logic goes. The problem with this thesis is that our “needs” and how to have them met are subject to wild distortions for many people, regardless of means. Money – something very easy to quantify – is regularly equated with things that are impossible to adequately measure, especially for people who have felt their lack at some formative point: security, power, belonging, achievement, prestige. What is “enough” is something that many of us try and fail to understand our entire lives, even with significant endowments.
Furthermore, the attachment to assets seems to be not only universal, but not even unique to humans as a species: magpies collect shiny objects, dogs hoard toys in their beds, or carry from place to place. Even predators – who are equipped by evolution with the tools to survive until the next kill – seem to prefer comfort to the hunt (as any cat owner can tell you). The desire to provide for our loved ones and perhaps even generations we will never live to see, to provide them with things that will enable them to follow dreams is common to almost all people. The pursuit of beauty also seems to be a natural aspiration of H. sapiens, and while some beautiful things are perfect just as they are, existing without a single human intervention or resource, able to be enjoyed by everyone – a sunset, a bird in flight, a rainbow – the rest seem to require space, labor, maintenance, means. All commodities that can be converted to money. Comfort, beauty, legacy – why would we seek to control or manage them? Doesn’t it all trickle down in the end?
Because the greatest danger of material abundance is not that it will make you soft; it’s that it might harden you. For I would argue that taxes are less about what we owe the government and more about what we owe each other. The people we don’t know now. It’s very easy to think about things we don’t like or which need reform, but take a moment too to consider the free-but-not-really things they fund even in small part: there’s public television (good cooking shows! Doesn’t have commercials!) Libraries (filled with that analog form of knowledge: books). School lunches, which not only relieve a burden on families who don’t have to cover them but literally set a table for children to enjoy the pleasure of sharing a meal with current friends or ones they haven’t met yet. Parks, which are filled with flowers, trees and playgrounds. Of course, taxes pay for complicated things too – prisons and weapons – and our personal philosophies on the entire picture are embodied in the leaders we choose. But any association of persons – be it large or small – focused on sharing will invest in ladders, nets and windows; one concerned with stockpiling its most precious or useful things will build more vaults, pedestals and fences. It's a matter of which you view as the crucial material expense and which is the psychic one. But either way, the bill always comes.
So Happy Tax Day.