TAXES

Usually I try to avoid it here, leaving such discussions to my more politically oriented Facebook page; but sometimes it's time to talk politics even on The Buddha Diaries--although this issue, as I see it, is a moral as well a political one.

My thoughts were prompted yesterday, on our Sunday morning outing, when Ellie and I walked past a good number of multi-million dollar beachfront houses--some might call them mini-mansions--with yard signs posted prominently outside supporting the campaign of a congressional candidate who promised: LOWER TAXES!

Really, I thought? The people who live in these houses scream for lower taxes? Perhaps they don't have children or grandchildren in the public education system, increasingly starved for funds over now these many years, even in such a wealthy neighborhood? Or perhaps they are unconcerned about the schools in less wealthy neighborhoods, where teachers are often obliged to bring in their own supplies because the schools cannot afford them? Where children receive an education that is all too frequently inferior to that offered in more privileged areas and enjoy only hard-won opportunities for educational, social and cultural advancement?

Perhaps, in the protected environment of a relatively safe neighborhood, they don't feel the urgency of other, basic social services? Police? Firefighters? Clean air and water? Sewage systems, waste disposal? An infrastructure that provides them, among other things, with safe highways and bridges for their cars? Do they take these things for granted, as a concomitant of privilege--something that nobody has to actually pay for?

An immigrant from Europe, where taxes have been high for many decades now, I have a hard time sympathizing with the American antipathy to taxes--though I understand that it has deep roots in the American historical consciousness. There was, of course, the original Tea Party in Boston Harbor--but the rallying cry of that rebellion, if I recall correctly from my history lessons back in the "old country", was "no taxation without representation." These days, it seems, the demand is for both no taxation and representation.

Taxation, especially in the past few decades, has come to be associated with the infringement of individual rights. Taxes are understood to be more like a personal insult that a shared responsibility for the well-being of the community--whether local or national. And the loudest, most effective protests tend to come from those who can most afford to pay them and have the political clout to ensure that they pay, proportionately, the least. 

The current phase of the historical American tax revolt dates from the early 1970s, in my home state of California. Led by one Howard Jarvis, now deceased, the campaign for the (to my mind infamous) Proposition 13 led shortly thereafter to the Ronald Reagan governorship, the Ronald Reagan presidency, and the ascendance of the anti-tax, anti-government that has brought this country to its present pitch.  And it is no longer surprising that the yard signs are out yet again, demanding LOWER TAXES! for the wealthiest among us.