A world without Taxes. Really wanna live there?

So I just finished pay my taxes to the federal government and the state of California. I've always been kind of interested in the uniquely American attitude that we should never have to pay taxes for anything ever. Such chatter seems to be quite a bit louder this year and I suppose that is to be expected in these tough economic times people will naturally resent any money leaving their pocket even more. In addition I suspect that a lot of the chatter is being driven by those like Rush, Hanity, Beck, and their pals that no matter how many times Obama says that 95% of Americans are getting a tax cut they'll still go on and on because they're bitter that a) their side lost and b) they aren't in that 95%.

I mean I get it, I'd be great if we could live in a world where we didn't have to pay taxes and took home our entire paychecks. However I think taxes are the wrong demon here but they are really easy to demonize because it taps into something universal no one likes paying taxes really so it's easy to get people fired up about the issue. Taxes are also something that everyone can very easily see in their paycheck each week and they "get", thinks like failing banks, investment scandals , a break down in general of capitalism one might argue, are a lot less visceral. It's the same reason for example that Congress goes on TV and rails against the CEOs (not that they don't deserve a lot of it) but it's easy to get people fired up about CEOs that get obscene bonuses and not so easy to get people fired up about new regulation on the stock market, etc.

The question is do we really want to live in a world where no taxes are collected? Well if you remember your 8th grade history we actually did try that experiment at one point and it was known as the Articles of Confederation. The national government didn't have the authority to collect taxes and as a result wasn't sustainable in the long run. They were trying to repay war debts to France and the other nations that helped us win the revolutionary war and they could go to the states and ask them to chip in but they had no authority to actually force them to. Consult your junior high history textbooks for more on the failure of this experiment.

What about more modern times though? What would a world without taxes look like? I think part of the problem we have in terms of anti-tax sentiment is that people tend to take public services for granted or don't think about them until they're needed. Like the fire department for example, for the most part they're there and you don't think about them much until you're house is burning or you're lying on the ground having a heat attack then you're pretty glad that they're around to respond to your call. Okay so no taxes burning homes, dying people, and general lawlessness....Check. Alright let's say you live in the Northeast, like having plowed roads?Hmm what pays for those? Okay so snow bound in the winter...Check. What about at the federal level? Well we owe a lot of the technology we take for granted today to the space race which was a publicly run government program paid for by...those evil taxes. Safe food? FDA...taxes. Educated populace?...taxes. Clean Water? Air?

The list goes on and on and while you might charge that I'm taking an extreme if you didn't collect taxes you couldn't pay for the public services we depend on and that keep us living in a free but functioning civil society. Just start thinking about for a minute. What's interesting is if you take the example of New Hampshire you find that there can be such a thing as to little taxes you have a state with a limping education system, constantly trying to cut essential services out of the budget, and nickel and dimming its citizens to death with fees for everything from boat registration to fishing licenses to a dog license that needs to be renewed every year.

The point is if you want to consider taxes evil fine but stop and think as you're grumbling of all the things you take for granted that simply wouldn't be possible if we didn't collect taxes to pay our public servants, run departments, plow the roads, pick up trash, and police the streets. These things are called essential for a reason. Reasonable people can disagree about various programs and their merits but I hope we can all agree that some level of public administration is necessary and to maintain an orderly civil society taxes are necessary (a necessary evil if you want). Anything less would be anarchy or at the very least unsustainable as the Articles of Confederation taught us. So I hope if nothing else you'll just think about what those taxes are really for and really about today, just give it some honest thought.