Is it Patriotic to Pay Taxes?

Much as been made of the Biden remark that it is patriotic to pay taxes. If you have to speak before a group, and you want the majority of the room rooting for every word coming from your mouth, then one thing that is certain to get you cheers is to make anti-tax statements. Almost no one like taxation. Anti-tax sentiments played at least a part in the American Revolution.

America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid taxation. ~Laurence J. Peter

I was raised by a house full of Republicans who had very negative views of taxation. My family felt that taxes took money from responsible people who work hard and made good choices and spent it on worthless stuff. My family members felt that taxation took the incentive to work and produce away from producing businessmen. Why make money if the government was just going to come in and take that money away.

In my family taxation was just a mild form of communism.

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor. ~William Cobbett

Governor Palin mocked Senator Biden’s statement that paying taxes was patriotic. Sara would have fit in well with the family that raised me. The opponents to taxation, and those who mock the Biden remark seem to feel taxation is not patriotic, it is justification for a new revolution.

If we don’t seize on this revolutionary moment to rein in taxes and rein in entitlements, we could be looking at a government headed for financial oblivion…and a populace that is so over-taxed and so desperate that we could be talking about real revolutions. ~ David Keating of the National Taxpayers Union

It is very true that when you keep your eye on the money being taken from you in taxes, you have to be thinking how much better off you would be if you could have kept that money. When you are having trouble paying the bills, or when you just can’t afford to buy a boat, then looking at the taxes taken from you can really chap your butt.

It is to the point where I say the government can just keep my pay check, and let me keep the deductions. ~something a friend said to me


It isn’t true that our deductions are greater than the income we are left with, but the sentiment is easy to understand. What might be some of the reasons we hate taxation?

1. The Them and US Mentality

We Americans tend to have a them and us mentality about taxes and the government. They (the government) have a callous disregard for us (meaning me, and you too, if you are in my family or someone I know and care about.)

I just read of a poll that said 28% of Americans agreed with the statement: “I don’t like paying taxes because the government doesn’t do anything for people like me.”


2. Government Incompetence

There are more reasons to hate Washington than can be fit between the covers of three dozen books using single space 8 point type. We hear about $800 toilet seats and $90 hammers purchased by our government using our money and we get apoplectic. Waste, waste, and more waste just drives us crazy with a furious, consuming, cancerous rage.

We hear quotes that say something about how the government thinks it can spend your money better than you can spend it yourself, and we hit the table with a fist and bark, “Damn right!”

Then there is Reagan the most popular recent advocate for lower taxes, and smaller government.

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." ~Ronald Reagan


3. Fear

We are just afraid that forces greater than ourselves will use guns and brawn and regulations and laws to oppress us, to rob us of our freedoms, and leave us in shackles enslaved to bureaucracy and government craziness.

Consider a serious quotation of fear:

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. ~Barry Goldwater

Consider a humorous quotation of fear:

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer. ~Will Rogers

4. We Are Responsible and Don’t Need to be Forced to be Responsible.

Government is an unnecessary evil. Human beings, when accustomed to taking responsibility for their own behavior, can cooperate on a basis of mutual trust and helpfulness. ~Fred Woodworth

I wish this were true. I wish that we would not need Social Assistance Programs because the churches or other altruistic organizations were so big and active that the private sector was stepping in to look after the poor, the sick, and the ignorant. I wish we were so responsible that no one among us would commit a crime and therefore we would have no need for prisons, or cops.

It seems to me that the aversions and enmity almost universally directed toward taxation keeps us from asking the question: Are there any positives associated with taxation?

From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they are taxed. When they go get a coffee, they are taxed. When they get in their car, they are taxed. When they go to the gas station they are taxed. When they go to lunch, they are taxed. This goes on all day long. Tax. Tax. Tax. Tax. Tax. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

Governor Schwarzenegger does not seem to think there are many positives associated with taxes.

Civilization Exists By Rules

I live in an apartment complex. There are well over a thousand of us crowded in together. It is my first time to live in an apartment. I have always had my own house, my own yard, and there were freedoms I had then that I don’t have now.

For one thing: when I walk my dog I carry a plastic bag and pick up the poo, turn the bag inside out, tie it, and toss it in a receptacle designated for bags of puppy poo. I find the chore unpleasant. I would prefer to allow nature to take that poo in as nourishment for the earth. But there are over a thousand people crowded in here, and someone, walking in the dark, might step in a pile of poo, and slip and fall, and be hurt. In this apartment civilization, I have to give up my freedom to leave it where it lays and instead pick up that poop and put it in a safe place.
Without the rule of picking up the puppy poo we would soon have dog piles covering every square inch of the grassy areas in my apartment complex.

If we were all on our own, we could do our own thing, and be responsible only for ourselves, but we live together, and to make that living together function we have to establish rules and provide services to enable us to be a society.

Some stuff is so important that I feel it should be available to everyone, and if that requires taxation to provide those services then I support taxes.

“Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” ~Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I want clean safe water flowing through the tap.

I want roads, traffic signs, and lights. I want the snow removed when that is needed. I want the bridges inspected and kept safe. I want the pot holes filled.

I want to be able to call for the police when needed. If my house is on fire I want some group properly equipped, and maned and trained to come and put the fires out and to rescue the victims. I want there to be laws that make rape, murder, child abuse, robbery, and fraud illegal. I want a legal system with qualified practitioners to determine guilt and to provide as much justice as possible. The needs of our society are many, and most of us want this stuff.
If someone breaks into my house, I don’t want to have to rely on myself only to defend myself from violence or property loss. I don’t want to have to track down the perpetrators and to take Justice into my own hands. I’m not really capable of doing such things. Without taxes I would just be a victim with no redress within my reach.

I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

As long as we see themselves only as taxpayers and not beneficiaries, as long as we ignore the connection between our taxes and what they get back from government, we will continue to be anti-tax people that feel a small weak government that provides few services is better than one that provides many services.

Part of the trouble might be that we do not get enough services for our tax dollars. Perhaps we would be willing to pay taxes, even higher taxes, if the benefits we got from our tax dollars were “worth it.”

I remember watching an interview on TV with some American journalist T.R. Reid was going to Europe to be a foreign correspondent. He took his family and while in England his wife was shocked by the 17.5% tax that was added to virtually every purchase they made. Why would these English folk put up with such high sales tax?

The next morning, when they woke up and his daughter had purchased a cheap pair of earring's, and one of her ears was horribly infected. The ear was swollen and clearly in need of emergency medical attention. The hotel directed them to a local ER and the ear was drained and medication was given. Mr. Reid took out his checkbook and was told that there would be no charge for the treatment. “Now I see why the Brits put up with such high taxes,” his wife said.

Perhaps our objection to taxes is that we get so few direct, clear benefits from the taxes we paid. If we had that connection of taxes with benefits, perhaps we would not object so much to taxes, even higher taxes.