I saw a letter to the editor in my local newspaper whining about the injustices of those without children being forced to pay taxes to subsidize the education of those goldbricking, layabout slug a beds working parents who dare to populate his town with freeloading children. He makes a good point. Why should he pay for school now that his children are done with it (assuming he had children in the first place). I'm willing to entertain his idea and pay more taxes for my children (only one of whom is in public school at the moment). But, before I do, I want the answers to the following questions (and before someone complains, I'm just using children and senior citizens in the next paragraph as handy examples).
Why should I pay taxes to fund my county's senior citizen center as they don't provide a service I can partake of (the senior center, not the seniors themselves)? Why should I subsidize their bus transportation through either taxes or higher fares for me? Speaking of taxes, I think my property taxes can be lowered if the government eliminated any tax breaks senior citizens get for their property for the simple benefit of not dying. Perhaps my utility bills can be lowered if the utilities took away any breaks it gives to the seniors or the poor. Going further, I'd like to see my social security and Medicare taxes to stop supporting those older freeloaders since I don't use those and, as a 40 year old looking at those funds, realize they won't be there, at least as is, by time I'm a senior citizen. Food stamps, welfare, unemployment -- I want all my tax money back from that too (especially as I'll need that to pay for school and increased taxes if my tax credit iseliminated as the writer suggests). If some don't want to pay taxes to subsidize education, why should I subsidize their pet needs? I'll tell you why.
I pay those taxes because I live in a society, not a private island. We all live in this society where we live by certain implied agreements to maintain a social order. We live in a society that has remained free and incredibly wealthy in part due to those investments our tax dollars have made to educate our young, keep our seniors in their homes and care for them as they age, while not burdening individual families with costs that could force them to decide between Grandma's medicine or heat for their child's bedroom (my mother is in a nursing home now and those bills would've bankrupted me and my siblings by now), a society that takes care of its poor (I'm not here to debate welfare cheats) or those temporarily down on their luck. We've agreed, by living in this nation, to give up our national rights, where it's pretty much every man for himself (read Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau for more information) and agreed to live under a social contract because we realize it is ultimately in our best interests to do so. If the price I pay is higher taxes, so be it. The investment is much less to each of us personally and the rewards are much greater to us as a nation as a whole.
You can argue that paying for education and senior services in New Jersey through property taxes and not income taxes, or at least a fairer ratio so a senior who is house rich but income poor can pay an affordable rate, is unfair. But to suggest, as the writer of the original letter did, that the property tax should be adjusted based on the number of children a family sends, or doesn't send to school is wrong. Sometimes our self interests are outweighed by the greater good. Stop being cheap and looking out only for yourself or feel free to move to a society that will support selfish people (I believe some 3rd world country where the rich lock themselves in enclaves while the uneducated poor scrounge for crumbs would suffice).
No comments:
Post a Comment