DATE: Friday, October 24, 1997              TAG: 9710240033

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: Keith Monroe

                                            LENGTH:   85 lines

FREE LUNCH MERCHANTS BAD NEWS: THERE IS NO MAN BEHIND THE TREE

The Pilot reported Wednesday that Sandra Nelson wants to tax the man behind the tree. Who doesn't?

Ms. Nelson is a Navy wife. She and her husband maintain legal residency in Florida even though they haven't lived there since 1994.

This allows them to avoid Virginia taxes and fees, including the hated personal property tax, which two candidates for governor seem to feel is the most important issue confronting Virginia.

Though Ms. Nelson is not bearing the same tax burden as her neighbors, she is miffed because she doesn't qualify for the same benefits they receive - specifically, in-state tuition at Virginia colleges and universities. It's so-o-o-o unfair.

The Nelsons are far from unique. Civic life in America is increasingly dominated by the entitlement mentality, the free-lunch delusion, the no-tax irrationality.

The Nelsons feel that because they are helping to defend the country, they should get a break on tuition. But everyone feels entitled to special treatment for some reason. Followed to its logical conclusion, no one would pay taxes and everyone would get government services.

Families think they should get a break for having children. Capitalists want a break on capital gains - don't they create the jobs that create the wealth that the government taxes? Poor people want to pay less because they earn less. Middle-class people want to pay less because they owe more. Homeowners want to retain their tax break, and sugar growers, charities, churches and Swiss bell ringers all think they are entitled to their loophole.

Which led an exasperated politician to sum up the situation with the classic: Don't tax you. Don't tax me. Tax the man behind the tree.

Of course, neither taxes nor strategies to avoid them would be needed if people didn't want things. Ms. Nelson wants to go to college to learn accounting so she can make more money and avoid more taxes. She just doesn't want to pay what it costs to purchase the service. She doesn't mind if other taxpayers pick up the fee.

Unfortunately for her, many Virginia taxpayers are just as unenthusiastic about paying for the services they want as she is. They want excellent public schools from pre-K through post-graduate study to be provided for free. They want roads and bridges and tunnels and airports and police and firefighters and a gazillion other services at no cost.

Unfortunately, the accounting professors - who can add - don't really care that students want to pay nothing for tuition, Navy dependents want a cut-rate education and politicians want to pander to voters by cutting taxes and stiffing schools. Selfishly, like the rest of us, accounting professors just want to get paid for their labor.

So do the people who build the roads. Like those pesky professors, they've grown accustomed to eating. So have the people who supply the cement and girders and other raw materials. They want cash on delivery. What greed!

In fact, virtually all tax dollars are spent for just two things - the materials needed to provide the services taxpayers want and the salaries of the people who do the work.

But rather than confront the hard necessity of figuring out how to pay for public schools or the armed forces or road building, many discussions of the issue take a swerve off the road. The subject becomes the automatic flagpole or the $600 toilet seat.

Such procurement atrocities are outrageous - and they happen in private as well as public enterprises. But they are the exception in both sectors, not the rule. And the solution pushed by government-scorning critics isn't to fix the problem and punish the profligate but to do away with all public schools or abolish the Air Force or privatize roads.

It's as if every time a doctor overcharged or was guilty of malpractice we decided the entire profession of medicine was tainted and should be replaced by homeopathy.

It's bad enough that self-aggrandizing citizens want to pay no taxes while receiving cradle-to-grave government services; the world is full of people who want a free ride. But they engender politicians who seek to win election by promising that official government policy will be, in the words of the Dire Straits tune: money for nothing and chicks for free.

The depressing facts of life are these: If people want the services that government provides, they are going to have to pay for them in either taxes or deficit spending. Politicians who say otherwise for a vote shouldn't be rewarded with a vote.

It's human nature to wish that life could be one long free lunch at someone else's expense. But those who believe the dream can become reality shouldn't be treated as civic heroes. They should be taught to add, expected to do their fair share and told to grow up. They certainly shouldn't be elected. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.

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