On Sunday, since it was Tax Day, members of my church signed on to letters of concern to our elected officials about how our tax dollars would be spent. As I was reading the letter, a woman next to me said something along the lines of how we need to "tax the 1%!"
Now, I have never been a fan of this "99% v. 1%" language because, while I agree that there is massive and unjust inequality, it seeks to lift up one group of people by pressing down upon others. It (the language, not necessarily all of the people who use it) does not love its enemies. While "the 99%" may have every right to be upset, the language itself (again, not necessarily all of the people who use it) promotes a war-like mentality which seeks to destroy, not love, its enemy.
"Tax the 1%!" I cringed when the woman I was with said this, but for new reasons. I realised that not only did I not like the war-like rhetoric of trying to bring harm to another in order to solve a problem, but also that I didn't even want the government to have more money at all. Like a real conservative (not those phony ones running around with their expensive campaigns and big-central-government attempts to federally illegalise and control everything), I realised I wanted to cut taxes, if anything.
Why? Why should someone in favour of free health care, free education through college, free public transportation, free internet, and free just-about-everything else want to cut taxes? After all, these things cost money, as I am well aware.
Why? Because the government doesn't do these things, at least not with the vast majority of its money. When only 1% of the budget goes to "fighting poverty" in developing countries, and even that is spent with such inefficiency that it only gives money to Big Agribuisness while failing to provide adequate necessities to the people it claims to help, the government does not deserve any more money. I would never give money to a non-profit that spends only one cent of my dollar on what I actually want it to do, and I certainly wouldn't want others to give their money to it either. Why should I treat my government any differently?
The largest portion of our federal budget is, by far, military-related spending. The exact figures vary depending on who you ask (statistics are too easy to manipulate), but the cost of our wars is undeniable. Costofwar.com is a good site to check out if you want to get sick. The cost since 2001 to my congressional district alone, according to the site, is well over $3.6 billion as I write this. The "Trade-Offs" tab there puts it into perspective: what my district will spend this year on the Afghanistan war alone could pay for "36,288 Scholarships for University Students for One Year." I'd have loved a scholarship instead of a war, but since I got a war instead, I'm not going to advocate raising more funds for that government.
Because the problem is not a lack of money. The problem is how that money is spent. At what point do we finally realise that our country's budget problems are rooted in the private profitability of our publicly destructive military-industrial complex? Taxing the rich will not make war unprofitable, nor could it possibly alleviate the publicly held burden of the destruction and pain caused by war. Only by turning our spears into plowshares, by building an economy dependent upon growth and nourishment instead of destruction and warfare, can we possibly solve our budget woes and create a just, sustainable, and fair society, and until the US government actively supports the dismantling of our war economy, I have zero interest in increasing its funding.
