ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 1, 1996 TAG: 9606030016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THOMAS P. KRATMAN
IN RESPONSE to Rashi Fein's May 21 commentary on taxation (``Why do we call taxes a `burden' to be avoided?''), reprinted from The Washington Post, I offer the following comments:
As a simple matter of semantics, a burden is a load, generally to be transported. Put aboard a truck, it causes additional energy to be expended when moved. Aboard ship, a burden causes the displacement of water and an increased drag on the vessel. On a horse's back, a burden often causes fatigue, pain and, if the burden is heavy enough and borne long enough, physical damage.
Language shapes our attitudes - this is undeniable. But to call a pain a joy or a heavy load an uplifting support will not remove the tears or ease the suffering of those who must endure it.
The question for the nation, as it enters the coming millennium, isn't truly one of "value for money.'' Rather, the questions are: What kind of government do we want and how much can we afford? And unless we keep uppermost in our minds the fact that each government program we want must be paid for, and the paying will hurt someone, we'll have no defense against those who, like Fein, attempt to manipulate our language and our values to make white black and suffering a happiness.
The debate isn't distorted an iota by admitting that everything the government does costs, thereby imposing a burden on someone. Distortion comes in when we deny the cost, deny the loss to someone and - in a clear case of linguistic matricide - refuse to allow the wondrous subtlety and power of the English language to fully inform our decisions.
When Justice Holmes wrote "taxes are what you pay for a civilized society," it was at a time when the tax burden on the average American was minuscule. Be it noted that as Justice Holmes set pen to paper in 1904, there was no federal income tax. I suspect that Justice Holmes considered the United States civilized all the same.
By Franklin Roosevelt's time, things hadn't become much worse. In our day, however, the average American has only just this month earned enough to pay all the taxes imposed. That's correct. Everything done so far this year has been for the various governments we live under. What kind of semantic nonsense is it to call four-and-a-half months of unpaid labor anything but a burden? A further quote from the U.S. Supreme Court may clarify a bit: "The power to tax is the power to destroy" (Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall).
On occasion, one must extend a position to its extreme to understand its falseness. Would 100 percent taxation of everything earned by everyone in the United States be a burden? Ninety-nine percent? Ninety-eight percent? The level of taxation we experience now is approximately midway between those percentages and the tax burden of Justice Holmes' day.
Nor is it true that our government expenditures never come "packaged in discreet units." Quite the opposite. What is a foreign military-aid package to a nation with an intensely vocal, loyal and influential support group in the United States but a government expenditure packaged in a neat unit, for a definable small group? What is government expenditure to overthrow a corrupt uniformed Caribbean dictator or two (to replace them with equally corrupt civilian dictators) at the behest of highly vocal special-interest groups but more discreet packaging for discreet groups
Nor need we look beyond our shores to see just how much of government expenditure is just so packaged. Subsidy for mohair, anyone? Shall we build an unneeded center for the Central Intelligence Agency to cut down on unemployment in your state? It's precisely true - and precisely the problem - that so much of government's expenditures go to just such "discreet packages."
Some things plainly are needed, must be done, must be paid for, and the payment must come from taxation. The musts include military security, a transportation network to move essentials and a few others. Beyond this, there are certainly some ``nice to have's'' whose benefit to all outweighs the burden imposed on all. But after these things are paid for, we very quickly come to what Fein denies: benefits packaged for discreet groups.
Who is the real thief - someone who finds little happiness in having the government pick his or her pocket for the benefit of some special interest, and therefore tries to minimize taxes? Or the special interest on whose behalf and at whose behest the pocket was picked?
But, not to be seen as obstructionist, let us go along with Fein's implied theory of taxation as joy. Since there's no cost, since the benefit of any government program must be undoubted, and since the ability of the taxpayer to pay without being unduly burdened is unlimited, perhaps we should return to Vietnam. What a wonderful way to increase everyone's happiness that would be.
I remain, however, quite concerned with the equitable distribution of joy. I'm deeply concerned with the government's failure to give each American as much joy as can possibly be squeezed out of his or her ungrateful corpse. I'm even more concerned about future actions of our legislators. Will they try to take all the joy for themselves, or will they selflessly pass it all on to us?
Thomas P. Kratman is an attorney and chairman of the board at Kratman, Pethybridge and Swindell, P.C., in Blacksburg.
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