In a column sure to spark debate, not to mention some arguments around many holiday dinner tables, Robert H Frank writes in today’s New York Times that Americans’ "inability to talk sensibly about taxes" has helped nudge the United States "toward second-class status in the world economy."
Nobody likes paying taxes. And none of us wants to pay more than our fair share. But the single-minded and wrong-headed idea that we can do without them is doing us, individually and collectively, no good.
Economically, our growing debt has helped devalue the dollar.
Socially, few of us are willing to have our favorite government program, be it our parents (or our) Social Security payments to student loan programs to highway maintenance to national parks, reduced just because we don’t want to pay taxes for it.
And forget that "it’s your money" argument, says Frank.
"Taken to its logical conclusion, it implies that it is illegitimate for the government to collect taxes," he writes. "But if that were true, there could be no government and no army, in which case, the United States would have long ago been conquered by another country. Then we’d be paying compulsory taxes to that country’s government."
The only answer, he says, is an honest discussion of taxation — what services the government should provide and how to raise the revenue to pay for them.
You can read his full article here.
