Why We Need Taxes

Recall that the first working title of my book It's All Tuna! was The Economy Doesn't Care. One comment I received was, "so what's new about that?" While the market doesn't care, fortunately there are people who do. Furthermore, some of those people stake their futures on holding high office so that they can try to do something about caring. I pose one question back to you:

Where would we (and I mean all of us collectively) be today had we not spent deficit-ly and raised taxes to pay for our programs?

If we had not allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to borrow their house equity to pay for college educations, home remodeling, flat screen TVs, retirement village units, etc. we would have not enjoyed the lifestyle we have come to expect for the past 50 years. I peg the interval at 50 years because it was after the 1960s that the spiral of wage increases, inflation and cost of living bloomed large. What seemed like a bright beautiful sunrise skyline turned out to be the mushroom cloud of imminent collapse on the sunset horizon.

Pre-WWII, the world was in an isolationist economic mode. America was still an agrarian society. Recall that in the Great World War, canons were pulled by horses and our bombers were bi-planes. We still had Milk Wagons and Ice Delivery and we had only about 123 million people. By 1940, there were about 132 million people. It is not surprising to me to drive into a small town in any state and see 50 to 100 or more names of young men from that town who died in either of those world wars.

In those days, families were the economic unit that drove all larger macro-economic activity. Three generations of related people resided in one dwelling that had been built to accommodate that family dynamic. Houses were homes and remained in the family for many generations. People actually owned those houses and were not beholden to an investor or bank. But in the spirit of the market place, two people living as cheaply as one is a sacrilege. One married couple plus children per household became the norm. Grandmom and granddad stayed on the old homestead when the kids relocated to the big city in search of a wage or salary. One had to travel light and be strong and lean in order to make that trek and not be slowed down by elder-parents. The dominant image from the Grapes of Wrath is the WHOLE family, from sick-old-granpap to pregnant wife with a babe-in-arms broken down on the side of the road with EVERYTHING they could carry tied on the side of the old farm truck. Houses became investment units and their value measured in dollars not bedrooms and hearths.

We moved away from that style of living where a strong back and a determined attitude put food on the table year after year. We moved into a world where strong backs and determined attitudes built railroads and skyscrapers for the marketplace to do its business of deriving secondary wealth from the labors of farmers, miners and factory workers. The market made it possible for humans to derive a living without having to flex a muscle or assemble a machine. Now I say that in the better sense of the practice. After all we did not need 123 million people to bend their backs planting and harvesting food and textile crops.

Today, we do not need for 330 million people to bend their backs to earn their dinner. The 59 million people who are 65 or older are not in the workforce, but need shelter and food. Yes, some of them still are working out of necessity because for them there is no other way to eat. Take a look through the Lens of Reality. Lens: Today due to the economic recession we have an additional 7 million unemployed people in this country who have been added to the 6 million longer term unemployed people. Reality: the rest of us are doing quite well aren't we? We go to work, we buy our food, we fuel our cars, we watch our Superbowls, we pay our taxes, we drink our beer, we complain about paying for those who have not, we worry about mounting debt (only because we fear that the lenders will stop lending.) This last parenthetical is the ONLY justification for fiscal restraint that I have heard ANYONE raise during the heated debates on the size of Big Government.

Big Government is Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and the interest on debt. To reduce spending on these entitlements we have to decide who will be sacrificed for the fiscal restraint. Some one has to decide who will be allowed to eat. Some one has to decide whose child will be turned away from the hospital because mom and dad don't have the money to pay the bills that will be issued. At the same time that these four line items of the Federal budget are growing out of control and remain unfunded they are also the four most urgent and essential items in our lives. Longer life expectancies are the primary cause of our imminent fiscal collapse. We want to live longer and live better, but we do not have an economic model which will allow that to happen without a mortgage that will some day need to be paid. What we have come to think of as mere comfort and necessity, is in actuality a luxury we never could afford on our ability to earn income. For us to live better than "the average" someone else must live below it. Hence we in America are less than 5% of the world population but consume about 25% of the energy production. Ask yourself this:

Am I willing to live completely within my means for my entire life?

This statement requires that you only consume one share of the resources which are equally shared among everyone on the planet. It means no consumer credit, or mortgages; you must save up to buy everything. It means that you will fund your own retirement. It means paying all your own medical bills or be denied care. It means that you buy no life insurance and if some cripples you in a car collision, you can only take everything that person has and no more. While you could leave wealth to your children, you cannot borrow against their future. My guess is that your answer is NO.

I know that my answer is NO.

We have and need taxes because we need the food, shelter, clothes and medical goods and services that the money will buy. The only reason we have a chronic National Debt is that we have chosen to defer paying our bills so that we can use future income and our future generations to pay the bills. There are legitimate reasons for borrowing now and making our children and grand-children pay the bill. Those reasons are supposed to be OUR responsible investment in the future. THEIR future. If we build a Billion Dollar highway now, it is supposed to be a benefit to our children too, so we issue bonds and get them to pay off the debt. We are responsible for constructing a sufficiently large health care delivery system with enough doctors and staff to be able to provide the necessary care. If we don't invest in training enough competent doctors and nurses, there will not be enough of them for our descendants. The actions of our Administrations has bled our investment funds to pay for non-productive pursuits such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tax cuts that have hamstrung our ability to pay our bills.

Today, there is no way to reduce the debt without tax revenues. As our ability to borrow grows thin, our economy will grind to a halt when the music stops and we are the country left standing without a chair.

The Wall, yes that one.

In 1982, Bob passed through Washington, DC, on his way home from the Worlds Fair Expo in Knoxville, Tennessee. The trip was very long and Linda, his wife, was engrossed in a magazine she picked up at one of the many fuel stops along the way. There was this trench being dug near the Lincoln Memorial. Bob drove passed and continued to look at the great architecture of the nation's Capitol. The significance of that excavation would not be realized until some time later.

As far as war memorials go the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has no physical stature that looms above. It has no complex intricate sculptural detail. But it has the stealth of a cat, and the punch of a heavyweight champion.

Bob was in DC on business in June of '86. He realized the construction seen years before was the memorial and had seen much discussion of the merits and criticisms of its design. From his hotel room adjacent to the Capitol Building he began his trek to the memorial. In his wheelchair, he set forth alone across the Capitol city. Block after block he pressed onward toward the compelling silent call. The stone building crept passed as push after push on the chrome rims turned wheels into motion. The Jefferson Memorial peered skyward and played on the horizon behind official buildings where the mechanisms of war and peace, poverty and wealth, happiness and misery are planned and set into motion by the force of human will. It was a will much like the force which propelled Bob against friction and gravity toward the granite wall.

The Washington Monument stood poised and pointing toward the Heavens as Bob rounded the corner. Its full length and immensity became apparent as Bob huffed and puffed his way, push after push on the asphalt path up to the base. He stretched his neck looking upward to the pinnacle. How huge it was and how puny it is depending on ones perspective.

From there the course was down hill to the Lincoln Memorial but the going became more difficult as the distance shortened between Bob and The Wall.

He jumped a curb and rolled toward the Reflecting Pool. The path was level but hardly flat. The bumps jarred the wheelchair as Bob hurried along the path then up a small grade at the far end and a right turn. There. Dogged weary faced soldiers stood frozen in time and space gazing at a memory which refused to fade.

Bob paused at the top of the walk to take in the essence of the wall and realize the power that it commands. With so much blood and so many human souls consumed for its creation, the black granite emanates a life of its own composed of the lives that prompted its creation.

Slowly Bob made his way to the bottom of the path. He felt himself sinking into the depths of the grave as the wall grew taller and the names stood out further and further as they became more numerous.

Milton, Crosby, Holt, Ramsey. As he descended the path the oncoming people silently stepped aside to let him pass. Not a word was spoken. They had their own thoughts and their own words for each other. Not even a "good day" was said to Bob as he wheeled by. He began to feel the coldness that so many veterans told about.

One very good feature to the memorial is that although one travels to the depths of despair and desolation as they approach the vertex, after passing it, the path is uphill and the names become less numerous as the far end is reached. One is at least left with hope that these are the very last war dead for this country. But there is so much spare space in Washington for war memorials.

The list of dead sits at both ends and reads like a telephone directory or a college yearbook. Bob flipped the pages to "SPR" then back to "SLA" finally to "SMI." Smith. Smith, Robert A., Smith, Robert B. There were so many Robert Smith's lost in Vietnam.

14E-17 seemed the most likely, but it was so hard to remember and be sure.

Bob left the walkway and went to sit on a bench overlooking the wall from one end. He passed the lectern where the list lay under glass. While seeking his friend his only thoughts were "this book is too damned long." He sat on the empty bench and looked at the wall and the people who stood before it. He could imagine the people who stood behind it.

A Vietnamese man, about 40, sat next to Bob. He said, "you remember me, Jim?" Bob looked at him, surprised. "You remember me, don't you," he repeated. Bob shook his head no. "You must, you were in my village. You and the others. You remember, Jim."

"I'm not Jim," said Bob. "I've never been in your village."

"But you helped me when the shelling came," he said in his broken English.

"No."

"I remember you, Jim."

"No."

"I own a grocery store here, now."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"My wife, she helps, and the son."

"I'm glad, but I'm not Jim."

"Sure, you'll remember. You just think hard, You'll remember."

Bob said, "I hope you're happy here now." Then he got ready to transfer back to his wheelchair.

"When did you get wounded," he said.

"I'm sorry, I have to go now." He backed away before turning to leave.

"I came here to thank them."

Bob began to leave. "It's been good to talk to you."

"Goodbye, Jim. I hope to see you again real soon."

Bob left feeling quite strange to have been mistaken for a man who might have been killed, or might have been captured and tortured, or might have come home to be ignored and never thanked. Bob knew that at least one man and family thought that the men who fought did some good. He rolled away feeling sad and confused. The road back was another two miles. Two miles never seemed so easy as when compared to the road that so many men traveled to their ends or back.

As he rolled back along the walk parallel to Constitution Avenue, Bob came upon a small booth surrounded with state flags. A solitary man stood behind the counter upon which was affixed the message "MIAs You can do something." To the right of the words stared the sweaty black face of a soldier still MIA. The stark contrast of his white eyes punctuated the moment as Bob first saw the face, the face that well could have been Smitty. But Smitty was a casualty. 14E-17 bore the name. But with so much confusion and bureaucratic SNAFU, the possibilities were there. Those eyes shot a twinge of pain through Bob's head and caused a muscle to spasm in the back of his neck. It grew to a full fledge shudder that raced down his back and into his numb legs all the way to his feet where it disbursed into his all but forgotten toes. There it remained a tingle for quite some time as smaller waves if chill raised the hairs on the sides and back of his head and fled downward to join the fading sensations in his paralyzed legs.

The man behind the counter just looked at Bob. As Bob paused the man said, "How are you, Sir.?"

Bob replied, "Better today, thank you." He was still quite chilled from the experience. He could not think of anything more to say so he quickly pivoted and departed on his course hotel-ward. The man said, "take care."

Soon that booth, the man and that photograph were in the distance behind. Bob could still see that face as clearly as ever as he rolled around the great eclipse by the Whitehouse.

Not many things emotionally overtook Bob. Even the death of a family member or a friend usually doesn't cause much grief, if it happens in the normal course of life. Even a car crash fatality seems commonplace in life with 50,000 of them a year. It is difficult to realize that the numbers of names on the granite wall also represent the number of people killed every year on the highway. Or that represents the number of men killed in just four days in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania over a century ago. They represent only a fraction of the total Vietnamese dead of the same period.

Dying for a good cause is a glorious noble sacrifice. Bob never has been able to set definitely in his mind whether Vietnam was a noble cause or not. In retrospect, The Wall could have its mirror in one that names the men who served in Vietnam and have committed suicide since returning home. That wall would be taller and longer and the book heavier.

---

TweetTweet This Post

Author's Note: The book cover images in the side margins of this blog are my own publications of eBooks available at both Amazon and B&N. Please take a moment and go to the sites and read about them. Then if you like it, buy one or two.

When Did It All Change?

When Did It All Change? posted: Dec 14, 2008

This question is posted across several blogs because it applies to all the subjects of those blogs. It's All Tuna begs the answer to when did everything become Tuna and why? The Principle of Imminent Collapse has presented many examples of the principle in action, but why is it that we repeatedly fail to do anything about it? Is THAT another of the characteristics of the PIC? And the Vulnerable Geometry is only vulnerable because we construct it that way. Why?

This post seeks to elicit examples of when it all began and what evidence, albeit in retrospect, can be seen that has led us from the Before to the Now. An example of this question and answer is thus: People driving on the road today are so rude, ignorant and aggressive that they endanger everyone around them and sometimes commit murder over simple things. When did this start and what caused it to happen?

With that in mind, what is the answer to these:

When and why did it become more important to make a profit than to make a product or service that made life better for people?

When and why has sex replaced love? Songs in the 1950s and earlier were all about love and relationships. The 1960s saw some transition. The 1970s and on it is sheer sex and show.

We used to see starving children and mobilize efforts to save Biafrans. Rock stars sang and did benefit concerts. We had Farm Aid. We had Feed the Children. Now we hardly even know the place called Darfur. What has happened?

If the answers were simple, we would have solved our problems already. But identifying the causes and the time line is an essential step in getting to that goal.

Vulnerable Geometry at Blogspot

Sustainable Geometry at Blogspot

It's All Tuna! at Blogspot

Principle of Imminent Collapse at Blogspot

www.itsalltuna-blog.com

www.ThePIC-Blog.com

Sustainable Consumerism

The global economy has been sinking into a quagmire allegedly created by the magnitude of crappy mortgages that turned into foreclosures in the seminal year of 2008. Everything seemed to be going along reasonably well until something happened. People went to work and earned their paychecks. Mothers shopped for groceries and toted the children from one after school activity to another. Consumers bought new cars, flatscreen TVs, cell-phones and iStuff. Cable and satellite content delivery utilities put every conceivable sports event on screens in millions of American homes. Beer and a multitude of fried potato and corn products ran aplenty. Tens of millions of Americans earned a paycheck, received a pension payment, got a public assistance check of one kind or another, and dutifully spent all of it on the consumables, commodities and utilities and medical bills. All seemed right with the world.

But lurking just beneath the surface was a condition so insidious that it would bring down the global economy in a way that the most diabolical arch-villain criminal mind could not even imagine. On top of that, it was not especially dastardly in its character. One could not point to the evil doers and single them out for punishment.

The unsustainable geometry was that there isn't enough income in this country to buy all the stuff that needs to be bought in order to keep everyone employed. The situation becomes even worse as more and ore jobs migrate to less developed countries to allow their people to earn the living that they need. They can make the products but not afford to buy them. Therefore, they are not the consumers that we are.

In order to pay for all that stuff, we needed to borrow against our most valuable assets: our houses. As our real buying power from earnings fell over the last decade or so, we supplemented it with the easy credit that the financial sector was so eager to provide at 6% to 18.99% compounded interest. The system had no option other than to implode. It could not be sustained nor could it expand indefinitely.