Bewildered

[fpb]

One of the ways in which Americans, or at least Republicans, simply do not seem to live on the same planet as the rest of us, is shown by the fury with which the whole Republican party has attacked Joe Biden for saying that paying tax - sorry: for the rich to pay more tax - could be regarded as patriotic. The poor man has not said one thing - not his celebrated plagiarism of Neil Kinnock, not his bizarre opinions on Iran or Iraq, not his fourteen great and small proven misstatements in the vice-presidential debate alone - on which bloggerdom and campaign alike have fallen with half the ferocity, the repeated outrage, the pretend irony and real fury with which they have handled what should be a statement of the obvious. Of course paying tax is patriotic; just as hiding your profits in Third World holes with no taxation is unpatriotic and anti-national. Of course paying tax is patriotic; it is one of the basic duties of any citizen, one of the bonds that bind citizen and country, citizen and state, and entitle the citizen to make demands of the state and be heard. Of course paying tax is patriotic: it pays for the army that defends you, the police force that protects you, the courts that enforce your rights and the bureaucracy that records them (as well as, in countries that have one, the health service that defends your health). Of course paying tax is patriotic; can you conceive of a patriot - I am not speaking to the Americans, for evidently they can - can you conceive of a patriot who would want his government to be feeble, penniless, incapable of performing its basic duties?

The Republicans have made this one of the core elements of their message. When Sarah Palin directly attacked Obama for his closer relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers (surely a powerful enough message in itself), she bathetically capped it with a reminder that "these are the people who think that paying more tax is patriotic". As if, you know, asking people to pay more tax were not only on the same level as being acquainted with bomb-throwers, but actually explained and justified it. And if you think that this is only Palin, you have not been following the conservative blogosphere.

In any other country in the world this would be suicide: even in sister English-speaking countries such as Britain or Australia, which share American attitudes to some degree, this continuous hammering at the patriotism of not paying more tax would expose the party to the answer that their only patriotism resides evidently in their wallet, that they stop being patriotic the moment they have to pay a penny extra for it. Such an answer would be popular and probably reach the majority; it would rouse both hilarity and contempt. Yet, in America, the immensely clever and far-sighted McCain campaign, that has not put a foot wrong yet, clearly expects this to be a successful point, and that hilarity and contempt will only flow the other way.

This is one of those moments where I feel helpless before American attitudes. No matter how much I work at it, I simply do not understand them. I do not know whether the McCain campaign has calculated correctly, and whether the majority of Americans will react negatively to Biden's point - which was about the richer part of the community anyway - and positively to Republican mockery; or whether the reaction will be as it is in most other nations, that from time to time it may be necessary to raise tax, and that if it really is necessary, then it is patriotic to pay it (and in any case profoundly unpatriotic to set up fake trust funds in the Cayman Islands or the like). But I would say that the reaction to this will tell us a lot.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I've always felt extremely patriotic about paying taxes. I know people regard me as a freak, but I *like* to pay my fair share. I like to know that to the best of my ability, I'm supporting my country. I don't like all--and sometimes not even most--of my country's policies, but I WANT to contribute to the funding of schools, to the repair of vital infrastructure like bridges and highways, to social services such as Medicaid and Social Security, to all the research programs, arts programs, and overseas aid programs that the government supports, yes, even to the military too (though I'd prefer it if the percentage the military received was somewhat smaller). Paying my taxes is my way of saying I care about my fellow countrymen.

Government should represent our desire to come together and do, with the force of all of us working together, certain things that are much, much harder to do on a smaller scale.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

you conceive of a patriot who would want his government to be feeble, penniless, incapable of performing its basic duties?...I do not know whether the McCain campaign has calculated correctly

Yes...Yes, I can. I don't know if it will have a major effect--I don't know if anything can save McCain--but certainly he will get some votes from it.

I guess it boils down to whether you think the government is a country's enemy or friend. The idea that a government is a country's worst enemy is culturally (if not practically) held among a certain segment of the United States--and I think America is the only country in the world that has such a substantial part of the population feel that way--a segment that "should" vote Republican but is disgusted with McCain. This gambit is aimed at them, and he probably will pick up a few of them by calling his opponent socialist.

Also, I'm confused by your use of "tax." America has taxes from at least three different entities, probably from more than six, and these entities all have different sub-taxes.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Biden's remark, to those who objected to it, sounded roughly like "complaining about excessive taxation is unpatriotic." Taxation, to the American mind, is at a visceral level very closely associated with abuses of the power to tax; remember that excessive taxation was among the principal reasons that America justified cutting her ties with Britain.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That is roughly as true as that the Civil War was about States' Rights. Let us see what the original signers complained of:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. (FPB notes: this is the first apparent allusion to taxation, and even so very unclear. Hardly suggests that it mattered much to the signers as opposed to George III's outrages against their legislative and administrative powers!

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

- For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

- For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: (FPB notes: took you long enough, gentlemen! And yet this supposedly important point comes only as a minor part of the complaint against the establishment of military law.)

- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Leaving aside the historical comparison, I also would say that this is close to it. I would agree with the bare statement that paying taxes is indeed patriotic, in the sense of supporting the government's performance of its basic duties - the police, the courts, national defense, etc., etc.

Nevertheless, I submit that in the context of a government that sees fit to perform not only its basic duties but also its extended duties, and its unconstitutional duties that it just made up; and is both wastefully inefficient in doing so, and is failing in delivering on its promises in many areas (for example, public education) despite spending vast sums of money on them; and, last and most of all, profligately spends the taxes it receives now on subsidies and handouts for its friends (vide. the bailout bill that ballooned from 3 pages to 422 pages of handouts for children's wooden arrow makers, etc.)...

Well, I think it's entirely understandable if people read a politician's use of "it is patriotic to pay taxes" as a truth used to cover a political reality much closer to "If you have any wealth, shut up and be mulcted. We have our friends to pay off."

[fpb.livejournal.com]

IN that case, you take part in the political process to denounce abuses and, if possible, drag abusers before the courts. You do not declare yourself independent of your own government for tax purposes (though for no others, since if the government declared the protection of police and courts withdrawn from you in reciprocation, you would indubitably scream blue murder). Since no government is ever going to do everything exactly as every citizen wishes it, to attack the duty to pay tax every time you disagree with what the government is doing is the same as to write yourself a blank permit not to pay tax any time you like. Citizenship is a serious business, and so is duty, but it surprises me that supposed conservatives should claim the right to redefine either in their own favour.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Who's said anything about doing that? All most people making this point are doing is noting that, as so often happens, the mantle of virtue is draping a gang of thieves, and people should not be fooled by it.

Anyway, conservatives would point out the duties run both ways, and if one side abrogates their part of the bargain, then the other side is likewise freed of their obligation.

Libertarians, and at least some conservatives, would also point out that deferring to an unconditional duty to pay whatever tax a democratic government demands is essentially to say that anyone's property is at the mercy of any 51% group that conceives a desire for it, and that this is both morally and pragmatically wrong.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Which ignores the point I just made, that is that it is not up to you - at least, not to you alone - to decide that what the government does is right or wrong. Civic obligations are not negotiable at the pleasure of every citizen. No country can exist for two minutes in which such a berserk, upside-down notion of duty were applied for one second.

[cerebresque.livejournal.com]

Which ignores the point I just made, that is that it is not up to you - at least, not to you alone - to decide that what the government does is right or wrong.

Rather, I would disagree with that point. I would say that it is necessary that individuals decide whether what the government does is right or wrong, because the ability of the minority to either walk out by emigrating, or simply to refuse consent to intolerable impositions, either in toto or by raising compliance costs to an impractical level, is a valuable restraint on a democracy acting as a mere majoritarian tyranny.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

That is the morality of the assassin. You talk as though property were something natural and the state were something artificial. In real life, the very opposite is the case: it is the state that certifies and indeed creates property. Without the state, there would be nothing but mutual violence, and no property would be safe. What makes property stable is the law that defines it, the office that records it, the police that protects it, and the courts that avenge it. And if you even begin to think sensibly in this area, you should realize that taxation is not an assault on property, but a condition of it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for what I said about the morality of the assassin, tell me, is there anything about resisting intolerable impositions that John Wilkes Booth, Leon Csogolcz, GAetano Bresci, Gavilo Princip, Nahuram Godse, Lee Oswald, or Yigal Amir would disagree with?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://fpb.livejournal.com/262320.html

second part

[fpb.livejournal.com]

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Really, taxation? And not assaults upon the power to legislate, to administer, to do justice, to defend one's communities - all of which, incidentally, require taxation? I think what we have here is something very like myth-making.

Re: second part

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I submit to your correction. I grew up in a Reagan Republican household, so the myth I internalized may help to account for the negative response to Biden's remark.

[expectare.livejournal.com]

to legislate, to administer, to do justice, to defend one's communities

I would respectfully suggest that the Declaration of Independence doesn't say it all. It's very much a document of context. That it doesn't say "taxation!" does not mean that taxation is not a factor--even the factor. For instance, the article about to having their trade cut off refers to the blockade on Boston because the Bostonians wouldn't pay their taxes.

So the questions are legislate and administer what? To see who gets justice? To defend their homes against whom? Who pays what taxes when. Those who were organizing a concentrated, active refusal to pay taxes. Soldiers and tax collectors (the officers who eat out substance) put there because the colonists weren't paying taxes.

The reason that it took more than a year after the war actually started to issue the declaration of independence was partially because it was so hard to get the southerners behind the effort. The southern colonies didn't have to deal with martial law and other "intolerable" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intolerable_Acts) behavior is that the southern colonies paid their taxes.

Of course taxation wasn't the only (http://expectare.livejournal.com/25099.html) cause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Proclamation_of_1763). And, in fact, my teachers were always at pains to point out that it wasn't "taxation!" so much as "taxation without representation!" that was considered bad. Still, I'd have to say the financial policy changes towards the colonists after the Seven Years' War were the principal cause. I think the overwhelming majority of historians would agree with me, even 'revisionist' historians--they condemn the Revolutionaries for being rich twits who wanted to keep as much of their money as possible.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

OH, and how does the complaint about French law in Quebec fit into it? I am sorry, you are reading it upside down. The complaint was that the power to make laws, which inevitably includes the power to raise taxes, was being expropriated in various ways from the colonies to London. It was the same question on which revolutions have always started: WHO IS TO GOVERN THIS COUNTRY?

Even in Britain, you say?

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

I advert you to the Turra Coo, and to any Conservative Association outwith metropolitan London.

Re: Even in Britain, you say?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

NO TORY would dare say that to tax the rich is unpatriotic. They would be demolished by countering Labour and Liberal fire. You should realize this. It would resurrect every lingering suspicion of Tory motives that lurks in the breast of every non-Tory Briton.

Which is one reason I said nothing of the sort.

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

Another reason being that that is not my view.

Everyone shd be reasonably taxed to maintain the proper purposes of government. No one, least of all the poor, ought to be taxed for anything else.

Even so, to measure patriotism by how enthusiastic one is at submitting to the exciseman is simply silly.

Re: Which is one reason I said nothing of the sort.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you object to having your view distorted, don't distort that of others. I did not say that one has to pay tax enthusiastically, any more than one has to go to war enthusiastically or resist crime enthusiastically or denounce terrorism enthusiastically. These are things that cost and that should be treated wtih appropriate seriousness. I never said anything else and I suggest you do not try to make it sound as if I had.

And if you cannot distinguish between criticism of Mr Biden -

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

- and what you mistakenly take to be a mischaracterisation of your views and statements rather than, as it rathr obviously was, an attack on his, then you may wish to hold such responses over until the next afternoon, as I tend to do, on the ground that everyone becomes a trifle cranky and loses some element of discerning judgement after dinner and the decanter, dear boy.

[ashesofautumn.livejournal.com]

I think it's because she's catering to two separate crowds at once with ridicule like that.

The first group is the wealthy, who just don't want to pay more taxes and give up more of their wealth. The other is the flag-waving "support the troops!" crowd who associate patriotism with displays like yellow ribbon magnets.

During the debate, I recall Palin saying something about putting the government back on the "side of the people" multiple times. Paying taxes to the government isn't patriotic because the government isn't on "our" side, the government has its own agenda that works contrary to the American people.

Personally I've never thought of paying taxes as patriotic, just as something that's a part of working. I don't begrudge the government for taxing me - just for often spending my tax dollars unwisely.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Your connection of the idea of "putting the government on the side of the people" and the tax question is most interesting and came closer than anything that has been said here so far to explaining the nexus of ideas to me.

I don't know if you've seen this essay: http://fpb.livejournal.com/345158.html (with a little additional note here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/345365.html). I think I wrote it while you were away. It has a lot to say about different European and American notions of what citizenship means, including a little on taxation.

[ashesofautumn.livejournal.com]

I think one aspect of the health care debate certainly ties into a mistrust of the government.

They are not on our side, if they raise taxes on us, they will take the money and do something that is not in our interests. etc.

Personally, I don't object to the idea of universal health coverage. However, my only observations of government health care in the US has been military health care, and perhaps that's made me cynical. The VA system... broken. Active duty care is not quite as bad, but still a mess. Some days it's easy to think that the government couldn't organize its way out of a paper bag, much less state by state health coverage for all Americans.

I do think we'll get there, eventually, though there will be resistance the whole way.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I did point out in the additional note that a nationwide health service in the USA would involve tremendous organizational problems.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Not that it matters, but the tone I woke up to today makes it Highly Unlikely that Obama/Biden will not be the winners in November. It will be awful, whoever wins, but I just hope everyone survives 4 years.

[pbpginfwmy.livejournal.com]

The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) building in Washington, D.C., has a quotation (slightly paraphrased, I think) from Oliver Wendell Holmes, carved on its facade: "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."

Of course, you would expect that from the IRS, since they are the ones who collect the taxes, but I think most intelligent people would agree with that if they think about it in a calm and rational manner.

The problem is that in the heat of a major political campaign, and one that is polarising the U.S. as much as this one seems to be, many people are not thinking calmly and rationally.

Also, as others have commented, tax is a sensitive issue with Amaricans. One of the rallying slogans of the American Revolution WAS "No taxation without representation." The U.S. government system is supposed to provide the necessary "representation", but many Americans -- especially many of those who support the Republican party -- have the feeling that more and more of their money is being used by the government for causes they not only don't support, but in some cases object to on moral grounds. Many I know don't think much of Thoreau, whom they consider some kind of proto-hippie, but their gut feeling is similar to his.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I keep on saying the same thing over and over again: that NO citizen will ever approve of everything the government does. Hence, to admit the principle that any citizen can pick and choose what tax to pay is the same as to allow self-indulgence to run riot. It is, I suppose, possible to have conditions where a fiscal protest is justified, but it can never be a right.

[pbpginfwmy.livejournal.com]

What you say is true, of course, but I think you are attacking a straw man. I have never, personally, heard anyone advocate that citizens should have a general right to "pick and choose what tax to pay." I have only ever heard this suggested for issues (a) of major public importance, (b) where there is a significant moral issue involved, and (c) where the government is perceived as being unresponsive to pressure through legal channels.

Thoreau, of course, withheld payment of his poll taxes because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War, and to slavery. (Many other kinds of civil disobedience in opposition to slavery are generally admired. Why not this?) I "came of age" in the late '60s and early '70s, when some withheld payment of income tax (or sometimes a calculated proportion of income tax) because of opposition to the Vietnam War. I haven't heard anyone suggest this with regard to the current war, but I suspect it may come up if the war drags on too much longer.

There is considerable resentment among middle class, mid-western, Evangelicals in the U.S. over the perception that the government is using tax money to promote abortion, homosexuality, and related causes that they strongly object to on moral grounds. I have not yet, personally, heard anyone suggest withholding tax payment over these issues. Most people in this "demographic" are too law-abiding. But tax collectors have never been popular figures, and I think this does add to the resentment of the idea of paying more tax.

bread & circuses

[thefish30.livejournal.com]

"It is used to be said that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Today, taxes are the price we pay so that politicians can buy the votes of those who are feeding at the public trough" --Thomas Sowell

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings and crankiness about this whole thing from a personal standpoint right now--I work on commission, and if we (fellow employees) don't make commission, we get 8$ hr and have to pay back the draw. Up until this year, I had been out of commission about three times in the previous 9 years I've done this job. 2008? Most of us didn't make commission the entire summer, effectively dropping (in my case) from an average of $17+/hr to $8/hr. And having to pay back the recoverable shortage.

So I'm now in the position of scrambling to get a second job in order to have my heat and hot water turned back on (yeah I paid my rent instead of my Consumers Energy bill, and they turned it off), having previously cut every other expense I have to the nubs.

What does this have to do with taxation? Well, I went to the State FIA to see about getting some help with my gas bill, and I got not one cent. I was told if I had kids and didn't work, I'd get everything paid for. So yeah, I guess instead of working since I was 14 and going to school for years, I should have dropped out of school and sat on my ass having kids with no visible means of support. Never mind that I've been paying taxes myself since I was 16. So yeah, excuse the ranting, but I'm a tad bitter right now. >:(