Once again it’s that wonderful time of year we always faithfully observe. No, not Easter, blessed as that is. I mean income tax time. We don’t do it with lovely callow lilies or delicious Polish ham but with shoeboxes of receipts and headache-relief medicine. Yes, I too have the annual purgatory since I make more — slightly more — than the government sets as a floor for taxable income, so I try to be as cheerful about the subject as I can be. How am I doing so far?
Actually, as with purgatory, we get what we deserve. It comes down to what we want government to do. We realize that it costs money, whatever we want it to do, whether pave roads to places we go or maintain the Lilliputian boroughs and villages and hamlets throughout New Jersey, one of the original colonies and all the small jurisdictions they needed back then. Now, however, it would be possible to centralize, resulting in fewer expensive public-servant salaries to cover. For instance, our state has 566 municipalities, all with constellations of officials, aides, secretaries, staff, offices and so forth. They all cost money. If we want them, we have to pay for them.
Another of the original colonies, Connecticut, with the same venerable antiquity, has not New Jersey’s 600-plus school districts with their hierarchies of superintendents, principals, administrators and teaching staffs, plus not inexpensive school buildings. It has 11. A few of our districts do not even have schools in them. But if we insist on home rule, whereby we can go to any school board meeting and make demands for subjects and activities we want for our young, we have to pay for it. Does Connecticut want any less for its young? Both states have very comparable standards of living, mean incomes and educational success.
Likewise on the federal level. Government is gargantuan, employing millions of people which, with the military, is probably the nation’s biggest single employer. Even the farthest left-wing devotee of Big Government could probably be badgered into admitting that something like the Bureau of Indian Affairs has outlived its usefulness. Native Americans could probably do as well without it. A century ago or more there might have been a case for it. But today?
But all this is prologue to government’s massive, mammoth mastodon on which we lavish, decade after decade, this year 63 percent of the discretionary federal budget. Here, the customary sell job is so smooth that critics are cajoled into fear of being charged with cowardice if they take exception to so prodigal an outlay for what is loosely called defense. The proposed Obama budget currently before Congress, like Goliath before David, wants $895 billion for the Pentagon. Ronald Reagan, no liberal he, raised defense spending to a whopping $77 billion and no one on the right complained of shorting our military. But if that’s what we want, we have to pay for it.
We should not gripe. We could say, as do many generals and admirals, that we can do with two thirds of that amount with no fear of endangering our forces or our strategic planning. It’s all in what we want, in what we plan. If we feel that the United Nations, whose crippling sanctions have brought rogue nations to their knees, is not to our liking, and that immediate saturation bombing is our preference, we have to ante up. Again, it’s really a very simple concept. Pay for it if you want it. If you don’t want to pay as much in taxes, tell government to stop usurping the U.N. Let its less violent but effective way get the job done.
In fact, it should be declared un-American to gripe about taxes. Where are the hawks who bravely call us to war, putting someone else’s son or daughter in harm’s way when it comes time to pay the waiter? Why is there no congressional investigating committee looking into the Iraq war, wrongheaded from the start? This long after 9/11, more than half of all Americans still wrongly think that Iraq and its despot Saddam were responsible. Should we listen when they whine for smaller government? Should we dignify with our attention those who want massive tax cuts for the super-rich after what this has done to the economy on the pretense it will help us all?
To sum up: pay for it if you want it. Don’t buy it if you can’t afford it. Don’t complain about living beyond your means. Watch what you want. It’s so simple.
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