Taxes and the Common Welfare

Fortunately, I don't know many tax cheats and at my income level, most of my friends are solidly in the lower middle or middle class. None of them are wealthy. But the two tax cheats I know of make me think often about the purpose of taxes. There was a time in human historyk our city history especiallyt, when the poor died of starvation and cold in the streats and orphans ran wild and also died of starvation and cold - think of the old classic story The Little Match Girl. The gutters ran with raw sewage and people died of cholera, typhus, and a variety of other terrible diseases born of ignorance and neglect. There was a time when we all agreed to share the burdens of public utilities like water, sewer and road maintenance. In the old days, each farmer or landowner would be responsible for his own stretch of the highway. If he were civic minded, he kept his part of the road maintained, if not - the por traveler jolted through the ruts and flooded out portions. Greedy land owners put up toll booths and made the traveler pay for the road repaairs and made a tidy profit on it. But we agreed as a community and as a nation to take care of these problems together.

To contribute to the common good is to see orphans housed and fed, and the old and the disabled cared for adequately and not to have to face that horror on the public streets, or the squalor of sewage thrown onto the public footpath or the gutters. We established public utilities such as sewer, electric lighting, water distribution, and public education! We provided for the literacy of our population!

As always, however, there are those self centered and greedy individuals who want to share in the public utilities and the common good but not pay their fair share in it. They are taxe evaders, those who hide their profits offshore, or in cash hidden in various places.

Tax cheats cheat us all. They excuse their behavior by saying they shouldn't have to pay for education because htey have no children, or they shouldn't have to pay for Welfare Queens - people they suppose who have one child after another and sit around on the public dole. Same for workers, they don't want to have to pay for the elderly or the out of work, as though these things could never happen to them.

It reminds me of a group with whom I went out to dinner once. When we all paid in our share for the dinner, we came up short and one suggested that we short the waiter his tip. The group refused and we began to try to figure out what had happened. It turned out one man hadn't put in for his wife. She had actually given him the money, but he put it in for his own share and didn't pay for her share. I was shocked, and so was his wife. That's the kind of man who is a tax cheat. He would have rationalized cheating the waiter rather than kick in his own share of the meal. Although I don't make much money, less than half of what I made before I retired (because I don't have my university pay anymore) I am glad to pay my share of the taxes to support this wonderful civilization within which I live. Every day when I walk the dog, I marvel at the tidy, friendly, safe and well cared for little community where I live and I am grateful!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com