Pay Your Taxes

-- By AlexanderUballez - 17 April 2009

The TEA Party

On Tax Day protesters in hundreds of cities around the United States gathered to express their general frustration with a confusing mix of policies. They want to pay down the debt, but they don’t want to provide the tax dollars to do it. The President’s tax break would lesson the tax burden on 95% of working families, but who is willing to forgo the tax break and instead dedicate that money to paying down the debt? How can you complain about domestic spending on the health of American citizens when the federal government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on ruining someone else’s country?

The protesters want to cut pork barrel spending but have not considered exactly what projects will be cut. Pork is, by definition, a representative simply taking care of his constituency. What happens when you are that constituency? What if government sponsored loans for higher education got the axe? What about federal agencies like FEMA? Can’t we just rely on states to deal with their own disasters? That is, after all, the answer to the problem of Big Government. Why don’t we support state tax hikes so that they can take the reigns from a federal government so clearly incapable of handling our money? Given the President’s tax break, it is nonsensical to be protesting federal rate hikes. Why aren’t these protesters on the steps of the state capitals protesting state spending policies?

Taxation with Representation

Because we don’t want to pay any taxes. We are convinced that we do not need to pay for the services we receive, that we are born with universally recognized human rights that do not require any maintenance on our part. Sadly, this is not true. What happens when states cut the ‘pork’ of municipal and school aid? Localities increase property taxes. What happens if they don’t? Our roads deteriorate and our schools flounder.

We can’t have our bacon and our pet pig too. This severance of civic obligation from the services that we expect reaches beyond taxes. In terms of activities that benefit the public, we have abandoned free-market logic by disregarding the connection between the fundamental rights we demand and the contributions we owe in order to secure those rights. In theory, we elect representatives that translate our values into policy. We pay for these policies through taxes, and we receive social and individual benefits in return. When we are convinced that we do not need to pay for these services we create a market deficit where there is a demand for public services, but a feeling of entitlement constricts the free-market value.

Public Debt

From this artificial price cap arises the current deficit in public service. Taxation alone is not sufficient to maintain the rights and liberties that make our nation special. Public servants ensure continuity of the democratic state, yet recent college graduates overwhelmingly opt for a career in the private sector. In 1979, 73 percent of graduates from Columbia University’s School for Public Affairs went to work in government; in 2007 only 36 percent chose the public sector.[1] In 2005, people under 30 years old constituted 30 percent of private sector employees but only 15 percent of federal government employees.[2] This suggests a fundamental disconnect between a generation’s eagerness to serve and their lifetime career ambitions.

Market forces often dissuade young adults from pursuing altruistic goals upon graduation. College and graduate school debt pushes students interested in the public sector towards private companies with higher wages and more upward mobility than seniority-based government work. Through public service grants and loan forgiveness programs we can remove some financial obstructions that discourage one from entering the public sector. Still, the benefits offered by becoming a civil servant, coupled with the unpleasant title of ‘bureaucrat,’ are not typically competitive with those of large companies and firms, the purported entrepreneurs of our nation.

Aggressive scholarship and loan repayment programs create incentive for graduates to consider service. However, these incentives have a disparate impact on all but the wealthy, simultaneously forcing lower class youths to serve while providing no incentive for the wealthy, who arguably have the most resources to give, to consider their civic obligations. It also compels unwilling ‘volunteers’ into jobs in which they may have no investment, but even worse it belittles public service as an industry that is so unrewarding in itself that it needs a government subsidy to make it appealing.

Paying down the Debt

It is time for a return to traditional values. Basic liberties are a fundamental human right, but this country is based on a collective dedication to defending those liberties. It is not sufficient for us to retain the benefits of living in this society without defending those who were shorted. It is time for us to renew our commitment to paying taxes, to serving in our community, and to being involved in our national politics. It is time we recognize the many benefits we received at extreme discount, and insist on paying in full so that others may have the same chance.

[1] Citing Rebecca Knight, “Concern Grows Over Brain Drain Threat to US Public Sector,” Financial Times, February 5, 2007.

[2] Citing Partnership for Public Service, Where the Jobs Are: Mission Critical Opportunities for America, 2nd edition, July 3, 2007, p. 4

*original paper below**

Pay Your Taxes

-- By AlexanderUballez - 27 Feb 2009

Life inside the Con

We are the Mark

Swindlers and sellers alike overprice products that, in reality, are worth much less. We work jobs we hate to buy shit we don’t need. Who lets the conman get away with this? We could impose regulations on selling products for more than they are worth, but it would be impossible to enforce. Legislation would be undercut unanimously. Intellectually, the free-market shoulder-devil reminds us that no one would produce anything if there were no potential for a profit. Where does this opposition come from? Why don’t we prefer a system where we were not always at risk of being swindled?

We are the Conman

To varying degrees of success, we all try to buy low and sell high. We all try to price products much higher than their actual value, especially when the products are ourselves. We pack our resume, wear the conservative tie, and submit recommendations from professors that barely know us. We all love the system because we believe we can effectively use it to create value out of thin air. What’s the problem if we all have a chance to benefit?

The con works because the Mark thinks he is the Conman

Most of us will always be the Mark in a larger con. Even when you are “winning” the interview, you are still losing the game. Sure, you got the job even though other people revised your cover letter, resume and writing sample so extensively that they are barely yours anymore. To the Firm, it really doesn’t matter. The competition was artificial, the masses of law students who sent their information on December 1st want the job simply because everyone else does. Few of us knew what working at a law firm entails at that point. Yet we want it, and we believe that the practice of overpricing ourselves is a useful tool in attaining that which we desire. But we are wrong. In order to stop being the Mark, we must stop being the Conman Stop trying to make profit. Stop following the rush. And stop protecting the freedom to con, because that freedom does not benefit any of us. The honest man cannot be conned because he is never trying to get something for nothing.

Life outside the Con: Addressing the Need

Instead of creating new needs, we should direct our efforts toward alleviating the many needs that already exist. We live in a society where there are enough people who legitimately need our assistance that we do not have to ask ourselves the question, "who really deserves help?" Groups that help these populations are relatively easy to find, and have broadly appealing (in theory at least) goals of correcting social problems.

However, reasonable people can differ on the best approach.

Lawyers, by nature, create a need for their services. Expertise on one side of the argument creates a need for expertise on the other side. Skilled professionals in other fields do not, through successful use of their talents, create room for more of their colleagues to argue the opposite. When doctors cure a patient, new doctors on the other side of the health issue do not materialize to undo the work. However, for every band-aid Lawyers administer, someone else is paid to take it off and put it somewhere else.

The removal is not always wrong but, frequently, the remover is the one with a larger paycheck. How do we reach those who will not voluntarily give up their greed?

Life with the Con

The godcon

The nature of the reward is what makes the godcon unique. Instead of monetary gain, prestige and power, the godconman promises eternal salvation and pleasure after death.

What if the godconman believes in the absolute necessity of God’s Grace? Instead of creating a new need, he is actually showing us the light, and sharing with us eternal salvation? Of course, we argue, he is wrong! We could never prove his belief and therefore that which he takes from his followers while on earth must be the profit of a con, regardless of its afterlife implications. But what if the only reason we consider the godcon a con is because we are so hung up on material profit that we forget the value of intangible benefits?

So what if the godconman is right about heaven? What if we could prove it? What if the salvation is of this world, and it would only take a few dollars a week to attain it?

The goodcon

The goodconman convinces us that there is something worth far more than our money and time, something that will pay off in its own special way. He shows us that there is real value in the act of giving, in personal sacrifice and esprit de corps. He moves us all forward, together, because our own personal successes are nothing without the combined efforts of the whole. The goodconman offers us something larger than ourselves, and it costs him nothing to distribute. Exclusive membership, with a small donation.

Are we really being conned when we trade our money for ideals that we believe in? What if, through service and donation, we could each play a small part in a worldwide effort to make life better for everyone? What if a government mandated service and donation, and lawyers were deployed to fight the greed of those who put themselves first?

The con is this: You probably will not receive riches beyond your wildest dreams, but you will get something much better. You will be able to reflect deeply on your life and your accomplishments with a Peace of Mind that not only did you survive, but you helped others do the same. This peace cannot be wasted on new gadgets, cannot be traded and will not accrue interest. In fact, all you can do "is lose what you do have, and that only by not passing on the wealth to others with happy heart."

• Leff's point having been to show how little actual legal or analytic value there is in the labels, your essay seems to be intended to achieve the opposite effect by throwing the label "con" around with an abandon born of the conviction that it doesn't mean anything. Perhaps that's what we ought to expect if we take our social theory from "Fight Club," but that doesn't make the reader any more persuadable. All this window-dressing surrounds what, in the end: "Pay attention to your ideals in choosing your life's work"? So much windup to throw that pitch? Where's the new idea?