Representation Without Taxation
Our cities, states and, yes, the country itself is being slowly controlled and governed more and more by citizens casting votes who themselves have no real skin in the game.
Can you imagine allowing minority stake investors to control a company? Or to give my example a more homey feel, imagine a huge family dinner where poor relations from the sticks show up to be treated a prime rib dinner and all they bring are dill pickle chips. Even though their contribution is slight, they insist on taking equal credit for the meal. And since they have more kids than the host, they actually end up taking over the entire evening. They dictate the seating arrangements, the desert menu and how the meat is cooked.
It doesn’t matter that they didn’t cover the main costs of the meal or that they brought more mouths to feed than they could ever afford to feed on their own, technically, there are more of them than there are of you, so they are now in charge.
After that rowdy meal of prime rib and pickles is done, I wonder how anxious you are going to be to have those folks back?
Pardon the crude metaphor, but that is exactly the position we are in right now with our current tax system in America.
No longer do we fear being taxed without a voice. We have a voice to be sure, but it is being drowned out by people who are in charge simply by virtue of showing up, and not because they are contributing to the overall tax base in a significant way. Just the opposite of the Boston Tea Party days, we now have a distinct problem with people represented in government who do not pay a significant tax load.
The statistics don’t lie. Look very carefully at Augusta’s poorest neighborhoods and see who they support with their votes at a rate of 95 percent or better.
In the CSRA, the neighborhoods that are the neediest, the most blighted and, yes, often times the most dangerous, do manage to generate a lot of citizen participation come voting time. With the choreography of a Busby Berkley musical, their ballots seem to be syncronized and in perfect lock step, and it ain’t conservative Republicans the po’folk are supporting.
While this tidbit is certainly not a newsflash for any of us who are paying attention, I am mighty curious what the enlightened progressives might have to say about it. Are they giddy because their side should most likely win the majority of at large Augusta city elections, or will they take a moment to consider how their side is winning, and just what that winning has gotten them through the years?
But tread lightly, folks. The instant that someone suggests another American is not paying any taxes, advocates for the less fortunate point to sales taxes and payroll taxes and loudly proclaim, “See, they are paying their share. It is not their fault if their income is too low to tax.”
Understood, but it is not the only burden they get to sidestep. Consider the double whammy pulled by public housing residents who also get to completely skip the property tax bills that represent 100 percent of the local participation of the cost of public schools. That stings for a number of reasons, but primarily because the schools that serve their neighborhoods are often supersized with any number of federal subsidies under that old reliable education system Santa Claus, the Title One program.
Quick question: How likely is a person or a group to show responsibility, care or appreciation for an institution or program that is provided to them by law, at no cost and with little fear that it will ever disappear?
That sums up the attitude of many whose children are using our public education system, paying nary a dime to foot the bill. Not through taxes, user fees or even traded labor.
Who says there is no free lunch? At many Title One schools you get free lunch, free breakfast, free weekend snacks, afterschool programs, night time programs and, yes, even holiday programs. Gotta love the bang for no bucks our public housing families are getting from their public schools.
So why pick on poor schools in poor neighborhoods? To illustrate the point that we see more and more the very real phenomenon emerging of government representation without taxation.
How ironic that the most demonized grassroots political movement of the last generation, The Tea Party Movement, got its name from a group dedicated to protesting the exact opposite.
The concept of taxation without representation is infuriating to be sure, and certainly justified the call to arms of our founding fathers all those years ago. If they could only see the untaxed showing up in force to dominate local, state and national elections in 2012, they would likely be throwing a lot more than just tea into Boston Harbor.You Might Also Like:
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