They asked for “from the left,” they got it.
No one likes to pay taxes. I am a small business owner. If my tax liabilities were to disappear tomorrow it would be the difference between running a business where we just about break even and making a tidy little profit. But I’m not stupid enough to think that if taxes went away tomorrow it would usher in a personal or national utopia.
My taxes pay for many of the things I need to run a business and have a good life: the roads I drive on to get to my customers and on which products like my inventory and my food are delivered to me, the schools that educate my children, the pipes that bring drinkable water to my house and take filth away and keep me from dying of dysentery or cholera, the soldiers, sailors and airmen who keep our nation safe from marauding hill tribes, the police and firefighters who protect my community and my family, and even the robotic spacecraft that beam the wonders of the cosmos to me and lift my mind towards the divine.
It is a common misconception that Americans are taxed to death. In fact we are one of the least taxed industrial countries in the world. Which probably goes some way to explain why we are special. But it also means that Republicans’ constant drumbeat about the evils of American taxes are a big lie. American taxes are often inefficient and imbalanced, but scarcely harsh by global standards.
