Again With the Taxes

Expect to hear a certain amount of this kind of thing from me, I'm afraid. I'm not much of a political person, nor do I wish to be, but I've got them damn views needing expression, by gar, and there ain't no shaking them. I really should stop reading about politics, but that's like ceasing to listen to sounds: either you plug your ears or you don't. I keep up with the news, sort of, so I guess I can't plug my ears.

So you say you're a Conservative. Big capital letter C there. You're for tax cuts. You're against big government. I can dig it. I'm not a huge fan of paying taxes; I don't think many people are. Some people like taxes as long as they personally don't have to pay them, some people hate taxes unless they personally stop having to pay them, six of one, half dozen of the other. I'm also not a big fan of big government; the government spends too much money as it is and they always want more. A veritable hemorrhage of money, that's government.

The problems are several. First of all, and most usual, you're a Conservative which means you personally don't want to pay taxes and you think that the government should stop paying for anything you personally don't need. This is greed. It's not much to work with, since we're all guilty of it in greater or lesser amounts. No real shame in admitting that we want our piece of the pie.

Second, if we look at government, we should realize that it costs money. Sure, big government costs big money, but small government costs a fair amount of money too. No surprise, really; if you don't want government to cost any money at all, you're not a Conservative, you're an Anarchist, in the strictest sense of the word.

So where does the money that the government costs come from? Well, unfortunately, from taxes, mostly. People who are interested in cutting taxes fail to realize that money gets spent and it has to come from somewhere. Or they do realize it but don't want it to come from a specific area of taxation. So we wind up with no one wanting to pay taxes and the people with more representation getting to decide who pays taxes. Not, "No taxation without representation," (which was not, as some would have you believe, a cry against taxes, but rather a cry for more say in where tax money was spent), but no choice in to whom taxation applies most strongly without representation. It's not as catchy.

Really, money isn't free. If we're going to spend less money in the government, that's fine. I have suggestions on areas that could use pruning, but that's not for the moment. However, the simple fact remains that someone has to pay some kind of taxes for the government to spend any money. To spend the same amount of money and then reduce taxes for some people, regardless of their social class or earning level, is an unsustainable proposition. Plain logic.