I take it back. Taxes aren’t a good thing. This is because you’re very rich. You’re surprised to learn that you’re very rich, especially when, like me, you’re really broke. But, if you think about it, you know you’re rich because only a rich person can afford to pay double for everything.
And you do. The financial bailout, for example. You paid for it once when you discovered that your retirement savings consisted of nothing but a half-eaten chocolate bunny from last Easter, three paper clips, and a dried-up Sharpie. Then you paid for it again with your tax dollars and with the permanent damage done to the American economy when the government pawned everything in the nation because your tax dollars weren’t enough to pay for the bailout.
Likewise with the economic stimulus. You write checks to cover your mortgage payment, utilities, insurance premiums, car loan, basic cable, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express bills, and you hand fistfuls of cash to your children and turn them loose in the Abercrombie & Fitch store. Think you’re done stimulating the economy? Think again. The president of the United States is also on an economically stimulating spending spree, and he’s paying for it with a lien on all the future job and business opportunities that your children will have. This means they won’t have them. I hope that your kids, once they’ve gotten their MBAs, enjoy stocking shelves at the Dollar Store.
What about the new car you paid for with taxpayer funds given to GM and Chrysler? How come it isn’t in the driveway? You gave all that money to the car companies and they didn’t even send a thank-you note on a scratch-and-sniff card with that new car smell. No, if you want a new car you have to—you guessed it—pay double.
Of course maybe you got something out of the Cash for Clunkers program. And good for you if you did. (Meanwhile, will some liberal brainbox explain to me why it’s a good thing to junk a useful machine? How does destroying something that’s worth money make us worth more money?)
Paying double for everything didn’t start with the financial crisis or even with Democratic control of Congress. Paying double is an integral part of the modern welfare state.
Beginning with welfare. Your tax dollars pay for federal, state, and local welfare programs. Then you pay for your daughter to pursue a career in “holistic dance liberation.” You subsidize your son’s Internet start-up idea—Buttbook, a Web site featuring all your enemies. Plus there’s your perennial bum of a brother-in-law, tweaking on meth in the doublewide and watching Cartoon Network on the high-definition television you paid for.
Same with schools. Your school taxes pay for Alger Hiss Public High School, conveniently right down the street, inconveniently full of heroin and 9mm handguns. So you also pay tuition at Friar Torquemada Parochial High.
At school, home, or work the most important function of government is to protect your person and property. That’s what the police department is for. And you get to pay the police and pay for burglar alarms, private security patrols, and guard dogs, such as our family’s guard dog, Pinky-Wink. (For the information of any prospective burglars, Pinky-Wink isn’t really a Boston terrier. He’s … um … a Rhodesian ridgeback, weighing 100 … make that 150 pounds. Uh, the kids named him. Stop yapping, Pinky-Wink.)
The second most important function of government, in my opinion, is trash pickup. And people in government can start with themselves as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, municipal garbage collectors pick up the trash from your house. But not until you’ve sorted it into the proper recycling bins, which you do by picking up the trash from your house. With government, what you don’t pay double for in money you pay double for in time and effort.
But usually it’s money. When you pay a hospital bill you’re really paying two hospital bills—one bill for you because you have a job and/or private insurance and can pay the hospital and another bill, which is tacked onto your bill, to cover the medical expenses of someone who doesn’t have a job and/or private insurance and can’t pay the hospital. Your tennis elbow underwrites the Alger Hiss Public High School student’s 9mm handgun wound.
And never is paying double as doubly troubling as it is in the matter of retirement. You have to pay into Social Security and into your IRA and your Keogh plan and put some money in your savings account too. You have to pay Medicare tax and buy Medicare supplemental insurance and contribute to a medical savings account and make doctor bill copayments besides. And the funding for Social Security and Medicare is so underfinanced and actuarially shaky that you cannot be certain those programs will exist by the time you’re eligible for them. And you’re sixty-four and a half.
Would you like to know what taxpayers are getting out of this deal? You and me both. How do we benefit from this twinning, this twoing, this duality? Damned if I can figure it out. Barkeep, make that a double.