ARTICLE
Tax-day Conundrums What Is A Fair Share? Tax-day is an annual reminder that we are each sharing our money with a lot of people we don’t know. Of course they are also sharing their money with each of us. Also, some of them are deciding how “our” money should be spent. Or, should that be, ‘some of “us” are making those decisions’? We each have a list of things that we expect to be accomplished with “our” money. We don’t agree on what those things should be...but we all have a list. Public safety, street and roads, water and sewers, national security…most of us agree at least on these topics. But would most also agree on an educated electorate and workforce, safe buildings in well-planned neighborhoods, and predictable currency? The level of agreement falls when we get to health care and publicly funded research. Would there be a majority that supports food stamps? Or, funding for the arts? The joy, or perhaps the miracle, of tax-day is that we do trust people…each other…ourselves…to not only pay our taxes but to tolerate the decisions of others who decide how that money will be spent. To say their decisions are compromises and “best guesses” about what will meet our collective needs and to balance fairly our diverse interests is to state the obvious. There is no day that should give us more confidence or serve as a better remminder to us of the amazing grace of citizenship than tax-day. Tomorrow we can be grumpy.
Tax-day is an annual reminder that we are each sharing our money with a lot of people we don’t know. Of course they are also sharing their money with each of us. Also, some of them are deciding how “our” money should be spent. Or, should that be, ‘some of “us” are making those decisions’? We each have a list of things that we expect to be accomplished with “our” money. We don’t agree on what those things should be...but we all have a list. Public safety, street and roads, water and sewers, national security…most of us agree at least on these topics. But would most also agree on an educated electorate and workforce, safe buildings in well-planned neighborhoods, and predictable currency? The level of agreement falls when we get to health care and publicly funded research. Would there be a majority that supports food stamps? Or, funding for the arts? The joy, or perhaps the miracle, of tax-day is that we do trust people…each other…ourselves…to not only pay our taxes but to tolerate the decisions of others who decide how that money will be spent. To say their decisions are compromises and “best guesses” about what will meet our collective needs and to balance fairly our diverse interests is to state the obvious. There is no day that should give us more confidence or serve as a better remminder to us of the amazing grace of citizenship than tax-day. Tomorrow we can be grumpy.