Freedom, Responsibility, The Common Good and Taxes

Everyone wants freedom.  A much smaller percentage wants responsibility.

In our democracy, we vote for our elected representatives, and we vote for those we hope will structure our society in the way closest to the way we would structure it ourselves.  This is, of course, a compromise.  It is likely that no one agrees with everything that their representatives says or does.  So we vote for the candidate that speaks to the freedoms we value, and the responsibilities that we see as valuable as well.

Everyone wants their freedoms.  But everyone does not necessarily want everyone else to have the freedoms that everyone else wants.  This creates divisions in society.

Everyone has responsibilities.  Identifying and agreeing on responsibilities is also divisive in our society.

One of the primary responsibilities is the awareness and cognition of the issues that form our society. And for our society to function optimally, the citizenry must view freedoms and responsibilities from the perspective of the common good.

The common good has lost its place in our society.  Some find infringement on their personal freedom (but not necessarily their threats to someone else's  personal freedom) a threat to our overall freedom.  In this we find hypocrisy reigns supreme.  And that hypocrisy is seen in the case of responsibility as well.

Narcissism as a basis for voting for our government representatives not only creates bad government, it also provides the platform for a more and more polarized government.  Narcissism hates taxes because taxes take from ourselves.  It is easy to vilify taxes.  So the constant vilification of taxes makes it difficult to have a cogent discussion on any subject that involves the levying of taxes.  We need to have that discussion.  We need to honestly look to the future we hope for and realistically determine how to get there.  Government can do things that the private sector cannot or will not do.  Paying for these things, in a progressive way, with a tax policy that does not redistribute wealth towards the top, as it is now, is necessary. 

We need to return to a more progressive tax.  But in addition to letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthiest Americans, we need to phase out the Bush tax cuts for the rest of us.  We need everyone to have "skin in the game', even those whose needs have them receiving government assistance.  We cannot afford to have tax avoidance be the guiding force of our society.  Taxes are necessary.

We need the discussion to be about the contents of our budget, and how we are shaping our society for the future, not just about how we can cut our government so we can avoid taxation as much as possible.