Poli Psy: Why I’m happy to pay my taxes
Published April 15th, 2006There may be no fact of life about which Americans complain more than taxes. Now, I’m not thrilled about where my money goes (my total 2005 IRS bill covered about 3.5 seconds of the Iraq war) nor about the portion of income I fork over compared with, say, Dick Cheney. Self-employed, I deduct the cost of every paperclip and remotely business-related martini.
I don’t want to pay more than my share. But I’m happy to pay my share.
I wasn’t so avid until a year ago. That’s when I undertook a radical experiment in consumption, or rather, its antithesis: I went a year without shopping. For stimulation and meaning, I threw myself onto the offerings of the public sphere. There, I felt gratitude, grief, and finally, ownership.
The idea came to me in late 2003. I was panicked about my maxed-out credit card, depressed by visions of cast-off Christmas toys and electronics mounting up in the landfills. I wondered: what if I tried to duck out of the marketplace? Was it even possible in the 21st century to maintain a social or political life, or an identity, without purchasing?
Single-handedly, I wasn’t going to save the world’s workers or its ozone layer – or cripple the economy. Overconsumption is a huge problem, requiring national and global policy solutions. But shopping is personal. I wanted to explore the connection between what we do and feel at the “point of purchase” and what happens out there.
Starting January 1, my partner, Paul, and I vowed to buy only necessities. We said yes to grocery ingredients, insulin for our diabetic cat, and Internet access for our businesses. Among the no-nos were clothes, books, CDs, restaurant meals, and movies.
Instead of spending our hours and dollars in the shops and cinemas, we passed Friday evenings at the Brooklyn Public Library and Sundays cycling the Hudson River Park trail. We wandered the streets, alert to New York’s spontaneous street theatre.
The library was ababble with immigrants learning English and English-speakers (including Paul) acquiring new tongues. Our bike rides took us from the buff men sunning on the piers to the Dominicans playing soccer at the north end of Manhattan, surrounded by salsa music, kids, and massive picnics. We whiled away hours mesmerized by the dancing fountain outside the Brooklyn Museum.
But much as we reveled in our city’s free spaces, we also grieved the condition they are in. The librarians couldn’t afford to replace lost books. When the museum fountain broke, it remained dry for months.
In the U.S., politicians of both parties parrot the dogma that private is always better than public – on either the revenue or the expenditure side. So, in 2004, faced with budget shortages, New York’s mayor floated a proposal to peddle corporate sponsorships, along with naming rights, to subway stations, buses, and bridges. Paul came home one day from his Italian class, singing out, “I love our library!” It occurred to me that he might not feel so proprietary if “our library” were the Bertelsmann BookCenter or Burger King’s Read It Your Way.
We Americans also tend to think of the government as a company. We pay our taxes for the product – our nation — and if not 100 percent satisfied, want to call Customer Service and demand our money back. The less we pay in taxes, we’re encouraged to believe, the more we have left for what we really want and need. Happiness is having your own – your own swimming pool, transportation, or healthcare account.
In the rest of the developed world, taxes are higher. So is public investment. The municipal pools are open, the trains go everywhere, and everyone gets basic healthcare. There’s less left for private consumption. Still, people seem to have what they want and need: Europeans consistently report higher levels of wellbeing than Americans do.
During our year, spending less on ourselves meant giving more to others, whether those were political candidates or tsunami victims. At the same time, our expenses, including deductible business expenses, fell. For instance, on my 2003 tax return, I claimed $719 in “professional viewing tickets”; in 2004, I entered a zero on that line. In 2004, therefore, I paid more taxes on similar income. And because my spending has not reverted to pre-2004 levels ($455 for tickets), again in 2005, I’m sending a substantial check to the IRS.
Am I gleeful? Come on. But I no longer feel I am mailing “my” money away to “them,” the less fortunate, or to “it,” a distant government detached from my life. In 2004, the libraries became mine, the parks, mine. If they were broke, it was up to me – us, our government: me – to finance them.
A year without shopping transformed me from consumer to citizen.
In reference to, “But holidays are feasts, and feasts are rituals of gluttony, which, last time I checked, was one of the Seven Deadlies.”
I would agree with you that gluttony is a severe problem, particularliy in America today. The Seven Deadly Sins are made up by the Catholic Church, and as far as I know, is not stated in any Bible. There is reference to “six things that the Lord hates, seven that are detestable which you can find in Proverbs 6:16.
1. Haughty eyes.
2. A lying tongue.
3. Hands that shed Innocent Blood.
4. A heart that devises wicked schemes.
5. Feet that are quick to rush into evil.
6. A false witness who pours out lies.
7. A man who stirs up disension among brothers.
Sometimes the Catholic Church take liberties in creating their own doctrine that is actually different from what is written in scripture.
Best wishes,
Stephen Lee
Comment by Stephen Lee — January 4, 2007 @ 2:19 am