Yes, I know. It’s been a while since I have posted anything here. I’ve started to, a few times. But somehow, I either got distracted, discouraged, or overwhelmed by the circumstances that I would begin to write about: the attempt to bully people with the Citizenship Question; the benching of Eli; the Impeachment; the CoVid 19 virus; the childish and counter-productive public scuffles between our Mayor and our Governor–when they could be…should be…need to be, Batman and Robin, coming to our rescue…together; the unbelievably politically-transparent and unconscionable discussion about de-funding the US Postal Service…in an election year, where we are being asked…no, told, to stay at home, etc, etc.
Yes, I know. And “Why We Can’t Wait” is not a title I re-use lightly. By no means do I confuse my circumstances, my sense of urgency, nor my eloquence, with those of the 1964 original. I am not, nor have I ever been, in a Birmingham jail. I do not have the nerve to think that my words will carry as far, nor carry with them, anywhere near the weight, of the original. Part of why I use this hallowed title, is that many of you may be too young to recognize the title–a real shame, that–and if this is how/when you first learn of the 1964 MLK classic of the same name, well then I’ve already done some good, no? But I also did want to let you know, right from the giddy-up, that this post isn’t going to be light-hearted. No NY Giants rant, no music or movie review…not this time, anyway. I have had some things on my chest, and I’d like your help figuring out what to do with them. Here goes…
2020 is turning out to be a bigger year than any of us could have imagined, and we all knew it was going to be pretty big, to be clear. We are, at least figuratively, at war.
War against the CoVid 19 crisis, for certain. That’s a war where we should all be able to agree who the enemy is–who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. But somehow even that has some “gray area” because of our lack of leadership–on many levels.
War against the impending gerrymandering that looms largely overhead as a great many of us wrestle with whether it is “safe” to fill out the US Census. Well, I know what’s unsafe…not filling it out and leaving the re-districting and re-distribution of our tax dollars in the hands of those who have you fearful of filling it out in the first place!
War with the very notion of fairness and democracy. Are we even seriously having a conversation about not bailing out the US Postal Service? Especially in an election year in which we are being asked…told…to stay at home?!
But I would argue that the war I want to fight is one that I don’t really hear (m)any people talking about right now…the war over taxes. Oh, we talk about it aplenty, but not all that much at the moment. With good reason, obviously, because so much more is at stake. But getting enough people to wrap their heads around taxes just may be a way to bring about at least one happy ending in 2020…in November of 2020 in particular. And it’s for that reason that I have deigned to use this hallowed title.
Put simply, I’m tired of the bad name that taxes are saddled with.
I LOVE PAYING TAXES, AND SO SHOULD YOU!
There, I’ve said it. Now, to defend it. Let me start by asking you, do you belong to Costco? I don’t, but I hear good things about it, and I’m just curious if you are a member. Second question: do you prefer to shop at a large, well-stocked supermarket, or at the local corner store (the “bodega” as we call it in NYC.) What I’m getting at is the notion of buying in bulk, and its obvious advantages. That’s all that taxes are, plain and simple. The ability to buy in bulk, collectively, for as many things as possible. And that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
Let me put it another way. If you are living an a household of more than two people, just about anywhere in the United States, and your household makes less than $60,000 per year, you pretty much will spend ALL of your money, every year, over a reasonable period of time, say, a decade. I would argue that, for most urban-dwellers–which is ~80% of us–that figure is more like $75,000 or more. Yes, you may save a few dollars here and there for emergencies, vacations, to buy a car or a house, etc, but in the long run, you will wind up spending almost all of that money, &/or be in debt: mortgage, car note, college loans, credit cards, personal loans–equal to or greater than your savings and equity. (Meaning that you are paying out more in interest than you are earning in interest, which is a problem for another time.) So, yes, you are spending all of your money, every year, just to stay afloat in your lifestyle. And a case can be made that that is true well beyond $75,000–maybe twice as high as that, actually.
What Conservatives have managed to do during my lifetime is to somehow make you think that you are better off at the bodega than at Costco or at the supermarket.
Why do we buy in bulk? Because it’s cheaper, and for the same products that we’d be buying anyway: which leaves us in better position to buy more of those things, and, to be able to buy other things that we might not have been able to buy if we hadn’t saved money by buying in bulk. This isn’t rocket science, people. A roll of paper towels at the corner bodega is $1.25. A dozen rolls of the same paper towels is $6.99 at the supermarket! Now, I don’t know if you have a big enough pantry to store the other 11 rolls, but the argument can’t be that buying the single roll is “cheaper,” or even “smarter,” right? But that’s always been the Conservative’s argument. That it is both cheaper and in your best interests for you to buy your own paper towels than it is to let the government buy them, and store them, and for you to just pick them up from that government storage unit when you need them. Well, it’s not, they’re wrong, they’re lying, and they know it. Sadly, a lot of us don’t seem to know it. And that’s why I chose this title. Because unless and until we get a lot more people–especially people who make under $100,000 per year, to see the obvious benefit of pooling our resources and coming to agreement on what to do with those resources in ways that best serves the majority of us, we will continue to be the victims of a divide-and-conquer, bait-and-switch group of elected officials. We will continue to be victims to: poor education, lowered pollution standards, outdated infrastructure, alarmingly high health-care costs, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Again, you are going to spend ALL of your money every year anyway. So, your choices are: spend some of it, say, 72% on your own, at the bodega, and the other 28% (taxes) “at Costco/the supermarket,” or, spend a little less at the bodega, and a little more at Costco. Which budget works in your best interests? What if you could spend 65% at the bodega and 35% at Costco? (And with a guaranteed storage space for the bulk items that don’t fit in your house, btw, because that’s another thing that government can do that you can’t.) Would you be better off or worse off? Would you be able to buy more “luxury items” of your own choosing with the “I-keep-72%” model, or with the “I-keep-65%”. Ironically, it’s with the 65% model. Because you would have gotten so much more done with the 35% at Costco, that you actually would have more “disposable income” even with what seems like 7% less of your money to “control.” Because you would now have wa-a-ay more than 7% more of everything already bought and paid for by your taxes (the 35%).
Too abstract? Okay, here’s an easier example. You can’t pay for the paving of roads, the building of schools, or the repairing of bridges by yourself–that’s obvious. But what’s less obvious is that, when taxes are lower, those schools you do have, may have to cut the music/arts program. So, now you have to hire a local musician to give your kid private clarinet lessons–and you have to rent the clarinet from the music store in the next town over–and you have to be sure that your kid really likes the clarinet in the first place before any of that happens. So, in many cases, it doesn’t happen, and we, as a society, just lost another mediocre-but-fully-enriched high school clarinet player. But if you’d been paying 35% instead of 28%, you’d have a fully-functioning music department in your kid’s elementary and middle schools, with several different instruments for him/her to choose from each year, and music classes every week, and performances every year. So she may have started out on trumpet in 5th grade before switching to clarinet in 7th, and by the time she graduated from high school, was 2nd chair in the jazz ensemble, was a member of the marching band, and had a plethora of stories to write about in her college application essay about the incredible experiences she has had playing this instrument that she loves–even though she’s going to major in Mechanical Engineering. All because you paid 7% more of your money in taxes–money that you were going to spend anyway, and would have had more “freedom” to spend as you saw fit if the taxes were lower…just without a clarinet-ist in the family.
So, that’s why we can’t wait. We have to do a few things right the hell now! We have to register to vote, and make sure everyone that we know, registers, too. We have to fill out the Census, and make sure everyone we know fills it out, too. And we have to start preparing Plans A, B and C for how to make sure our votes are counted in November. If that means getting a picture ID, for you and everyone you know…get it done! If that means creating car pools, or chartering buses, or buying folding chairs so people can get to the polls, and then wait on interminable lines, get it done! If it means setting up live entertainment, or providing laptops for family Zoom meetings over free wi-fi, or showing large-screen movies or concerts at the polling places, so people will feel more comfortable waiting on those incredibly, intentionally long lines, make it happen!
Because We Can’t Wait anymore. 2020 is the time we have been waiting for. The time to get things done, to shape the future, to BE the future. Are you up for the challenge?
