Like others, I’ve had my eye on the situation in Wisconsin (and the situation coming in many other states) wherein the solution to state budget shortfalls appears to be to go after public employees and their pesky unions. And then there’s the situation with the federal budget coming out of the House, that seeks to cut a gajillion things that are too depressing to name.
You may be expecting me to launch a grand defense of education, or funding for poor people, or funding for women, or for whatever. I’m not actually going to do that, though. Instead, I want to talk about the title of this post.
I’m sure you’ve all heard that line in the past few days. I most recently heard it this morning while watching the local news coming out of the mouth of some local Tea Party dude. Here is what I have to say about the whole “the money’s got to come from somewhere” thing.
I know the money has got to come from somewhere. I am not an idiot. People who believe in government-funded social programs are not idiots. The difference between me and somebody who wants to cut money for public employees (to give just one example) isn’t that I don’t understand that the money has to come from somewhere. It’s that I ultimately believe that I am part of a community. I believe in every single person pitching in for the greater good, as opposed to every man for himself. I believe that my life is better if my neighbor’s kids have good schools and teachers, even if I don’t myself have children who go to those schools; I believe that my world is better if we, collectively, make a commitment to caring for the elderly, for people in poverty, for our planet. I believe that some things are more important than self-interest.
And I don’t trust that individuals will take care of those things based on their own personal affiliations and interests, and I don’t want to live in a world where all that matters is ME ME ME (or YOU YOU YOU).
But so, the money has to come from somewhere! That’s right: maybe I don’t get another tax cut. Maybe I have to pay more taxes. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that, and, in fact, I feel like there is a lot right with it.
People who believe in social programs, in education, in publicly funded research, in the arts, in the safety net are not naive, and they are not stupid. Or, perhaps they are, but they are no more naive and stupid than people who believe that this country is a meritocracy in which all people have an equal shot, no more naive and stupid than people who insist that greed should guide public policy and that if it does all things will come out “right” in the end, as if market forces care about right and wrong.
The money does have to come from somewhere. We all know that. But let’s not pretend that belt-tightening in itself is a moral good, that fiscal conservatism is the path to heaven, that budgetary decisions are not motivated by ideology. Let’s not pretend that conservatism equals realism and liberalism equals magical thinking. Let’s not pretend that we won’t get exactly what we pay for if we continue down this path at the federal and state levels.
The money does have to come from somewhere, but you don’t get something for nothing.
The people saying “the money has to come from somewhere” have a silent addendum: “except for the rich and corporations, who at all costs must not be taxed.”
I’m always a little surprised when people assume that, though I believe in a social safety net and programs and public education, etc., that I would be opposed to paying taxes. And so mentioning taxes snidely is supposed to be a way of shutting me up.
I don’t *enjoy* paying taxes. I would like my tax dollars to be carefully and well-spent. But, I am perfectly fine with paying taxes; they do serve a purpose (then we can talk about what specific purposes they are serving, which is a separate question).
Sounds like you need this:
http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-has-to-be-parody.html
Thank you for this beautiful post.
I, too, would be *delighted* to pay higher taxes if it meant that we could improve our education, arts funding, and social services. Did you hear that, pundits? DELIGHTED!
It’s a pretty small price to pay. Look at everything that is a demonstrable outcome of, say, poor school districts: residents are more likely to be in poverty; crime rates are higher; businesses (and higher-income residents) move out of the area; and rates of adolescent childbearing go up (as the result, in part, of adolescents’ bleak image of their own futures). So if I–and everyone else who makes a middle-class income on up–could, by paying just, I don’t know, two hundred dollars a year, measurably reduce these problems? How in the world would that not be worth it?
I wholeheartedly concur. Well said.
Hear hear!
Thank you and amen. The governor implemented serious tax CUTS in the past 6 weeks that he’s been in office and then claims a budget shortfall that he ginned up as a guise to gut education, public programs, unions and collective bargaining. This isn’t about the money. Simply not implementing the tax cuts that he provided to businesses would have created sufficient revenue. I would happily pay more taxes to support our school districts and other public programs, and to share the burden fairly across all residents rather than place everything on the backs of state workers.
I am a state university professor and my husband is also a state employee. We are trying to figure out how we are going to handle a $900/month cut in TAKE-HOME PAY when this bill passes. I just don’t know how we’re going to swing it.
[...] – Courtesy of Dr. Crazy at Reassigned Time [...]
My *favorite* part of this whole thing has to be Walker saying that the protesters have the right to their say but that “millions and millions of taxpayers of the state have a right to be heard as well.” As though all those protestors weren’t taxpaying members of the state as well.
It’s also worth pointing out that one place the money can come from–in the case of the Federal Government–is fucken borrowing it. These right-winge fuckeasses rant and rave about “saddling our grandchildren with debt” at the same time that they rant and rave about “running the government like a small business”.
Well guess what? When small businesses need extra cash *now* to *invest* in building their infrastructure and capacity for *growth*, they borrow the motherfucken money. And right now, the Federal government can borrow money at HISTORICALLY LOW INTEREST RATES.
You’d have to be a pretty fucken stupid businessfucke not to borrow money at historically low rates to invest in GROWING THE MOTHERFUCKEN ECONOMY, so that it will be easy to pay back those loans in the future.
One of the things I do in my Latin American Civilization classes, where these kind of policies have been applied for 35+ years, sometimes with dictatorships and outright repression, is to show them how they are not “technical”, “common sense”, “there is no alternative” measures without an ideology behind, but that they correspond to a certain vision of how society should be. They can agree with it or not, but they are not “technical” economic policies. I also show them that in other parts of the world, people do question this policies, and sometimes apply alternative ones with better results.
I’ve read your blog for years, and all I have to say about this post is, hell yes.
Preach it.
Sing it, Sister. We are not overtaxed, and if I have to pay higher taxes so that students can be educated, and disabled people have services, I’ll pay.
I once shocked a financial planner who thought my goal would be to lower my tax obligations by saying that I thought we were undertaxed.
I live in Canada and I have heard, for years!, how horrible it has to be to live in such a high-tax state. I don’t begrudge my tax bill at all!
We live in a safe, sane society where we get our health-care coverage, pretty awesome schools, universities and colleges at much less extortionate tuition and a wide range of social services like those that have helped our autistic daughter thrive. In the end, I think that the cost of getting all of these services though taxes seems to be much less than comparable friends have to pay for the same standard of living in the States.
I don’t speak for every Canadian. There are more than a few who’re under the spell of the pseudo-fiscal conservatives. But an awful lot of us look at the loud-mouth Tea Party philosophy south of the border and say “Heck, no!”
Hear hear!
I’ll be glad to pay higher taxes if I know that other people and I have a safety net. Instead, my taxes go to a war in Afghanistan and subsidies for huge irresponsible corporations. Anyone looked at _Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?_, a book that makes the case that the money we spend on taxes, most of us don’t recoup in social programs. Europe — and Canada — may pay higher taxes, but they reap the benefits of health care and a safety net — which leads to better quality of life for everyone. A better baseline.
I don’t want to hear anymore about the sanctity of life coming out of people who think it’s okay to let people starve and be homeless. FRIGGG!
Great post. And when are we going to cut defense?
Thank you. Like albe, my husband and I teach in WI and although we aren’t unionized (a right we’ve recently gained and are about to lose again), we’ve taken hit after hit over the past few years. Furloughs/pay cute, health insurance, pensions…it never ends. Our local legislator just went on record last evening saying he felt no state employee should even make over $50,000. Yet, we pay taxes, patronize local businesses, and help keep the state going. The demonizing is demoralizing, and we’re all so very tired, but not giving up.
Delurking after years to say YES! and thank you for saying what I’ve been quietly thinking for a long time.
[...] Crazy has a nice recent post on the rhetoric of budget austerity: “The money does have to come from somewhere. We all know that. But let’s not pretend [...]
A.M.E.N.
[...] stop feeding and educating our poor children (NYTimes and MicroDrO). And yes, I would not die if my taxes were raised, as Dr. Crazy suggests, I can afford it, especially if it means we pay less for jails down the [...]