Oliver Wnndel Holmes, Jr. said that, “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” Of course, we pay taxes not because wh have too much money laying around and need some way to get rid of it, but because we don’t want to return to the Dark Ages and live, each man on his own, hoping to elude roving bands of thugs who raped and pilaged for a living.
I think that Ronald Reagan did incalcualable harm to the USA by driving several destructive memes into the public consciousness. First, he slashed the top tax rate in more than half. In hos own 8 year term, that trippled the national debt and has since led to the debt soaring to a staggering level, nearly 100% of gross domestic product. And still, the public clamors for further tax cuts for the rich. Who benefits? Only the rich. The poor and middle class have lost economic ground in real, inflation-adjusted dollars, and the wealthiest 1% have vastly increased the amount of the nation’s wealth they hold. If they manage to keep the process going, they will drain the country dry, then leave for nicer neighborhoods.
The other destructive meme is the one that says all government is bad. Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist summed this one up beautifully when he quipped, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Much of the Tea Party furor over “wicked evil gubment” is nothing but greed—the desire to keep all my money without any thought to whether we really want to go back to the Dark Ages and take our chances against marauding gangs of barbarians..
I hope our electorate can think these things through, and not be deluded by the greed of a few oligarchs who guide right-wing authoritarian leadership. But we may have to actually dismantle government to remember why the Founding Fathers provided for one in the Constitution.