Category: default || By jt3y

I saw an interesting handmade sign tacked to a phone pole on a West Mifflin side street this weekend: "No Kids, No School Taxes." I've heard the same thing said by a lot of callers to talk radio shows, and in private conversations with people.

It's the American spirit, 2005 Edition, and it nicely summarizes the virus with which neo-conservatives have successfully infected the American body politic over the past 20 years: "Why should I contribute to anything that doesn't directly benefit me?"

It's the same watery thinking that leads to "I'm not old, why should I pay Social Security taxes?" and "I'm not poor, why should I pay for welfare?" Or the message I saw posted on a sign last week; I'll summarize the pungent, scatological argument as "I don't ride public transportation, so why should I pay taxes for it?"

We can expand that reasoning further. "I don't live in an area that could be invaded by a foreign power, so why should I pay for the Department of Defense?" "I don't care if I dump raw sewage into my own backyard, so why should I pay the sewer authority?" "My house isn't on fire, so why should I pay for a fire department?"

The whole idea of having a government that "provides for the common defense," "promotes the general welfare," and "ensures domestic tranquility," as the Founding Fathers put it, is that we all contribute together to do things that we can't do individually.

I'm "libertarian" (small "L") in so far as not wanting government to impose laws to protect people from their own stupidity or immorality. You want to view pornography until your eyeballs rot? Hey, knock yourself out. You want to sit home and smoke reefer and drink beer until you dissolve into a messy puddle? Don't let me stop you. I believe abortion is reprehensible, but I don't find it my place to go into someone else's home and tell them they can't have one.

You want to peddle porn to kids or drive your car while you're stoned or murder someone else's unborn child? Now, we have a huge problem.

School taxes fund a public education system that's supposed to ensure that American students can compete in the world economy. We can argue over the efficacy of current public school systems, but I thought the arguments over the value of public education had been settled in the 19th century.

No, I don't have kids, and I went to parochial school, but I pay my school taxes in hope that the school district will educate the little nippers so they'll go out and get decent jobs, and not break into my house and steal my ... well, what is it that I have of value? I support welfare-to-work programs, but it's nice to know that if someone loses their job, they won't have to resort to breaking into houses, either. And we can't have welfare-to-work without having a way for former welfare recipients to get to work, which leaves us stuck providing public transit.

That's why you just can't "opt out" of those parts of society you don't want, and why "no kids, no school taxes" is an idiotic statement. According to the Pennsylvania Economy League, it costs more than $9,000 to educate each elementary school pupil --- paying for the cost to heat the buildings, buy the chalk, pay the teachers, run the school buses around, the whole nine yards. A family with two children earning the median Pennsylvania income of $43,000 would be paying out nearly half of their pre-tax cash on educational expenses, to say nothing of feeding and sheltering the kiddos and keeping them in Garanimals and Underoos.

Can we argue over Pennsylvania's method of public school funding? Most definitely. Property taxes are a patently ridiculous way to fund education; they don't take into account the property owner's ability to pay. They don't account for people who may be land-rich but cash-poor, like the elderly. Property only has a value when it's sold for cash, after all. Sales taxes aren't particularly good, either --- they're outrageously regressive --- and higher income taxes would be politically unpopular.

But simply saying "no kids, no school taxes" (or "no Social Security") marks one as a member of the Flat Earth Society. It's not just short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating, it's downright cruel.

Civilized societies stay civilized when they distribute the burdens of civilization over as broad of a segment of the population as possible. Yet the neo-con philosophy seems to be to concentrate both burdens and wealth on limited portions of the population --- the burdens onto the people who need the help, and the wealth on the people who already have it. The poor keep borrowing money, and the rich keep getting tax cuts.

That isn't sustainable for very long. And if the chartered members of the Flat Earth Society who currently seem to hold the reins of power in Washington keep steering us in this direction, we may find out just how Flat the Earth is when they drive the whole dadblamed American economy right off the end.