Back in the middle of April, I was thinking; people hate taxes. They even hate the word tax. It fills them with loathing and feelings of waste and pain. Behavioral scientists have known this for years.
Instead of income tax (which is brutal and inelegant in and of itself), what if we called the money we pay to be a United States citizen something like Freedom Investing. We become members, not just taxpayers.
Citizenship seems to have lost it’s meaning and somehow is misconstrued with free. Memberships we understand. You pay for something and you get it (hopefully). A Freedom Investment means a return for the money put into the partnership. So in return, we get security, government services, etc. It is never going to be free, so why not treat it like what it should have always been – an investment in the American way of life? No. It is a tax.
Taxes are involuntary, so maybe we make it like a service, like your electric bill. We pay into it as part of the privilege for being an American. It can’t be just another word for tax, however, it must actually be an investment and seen as such by the government and by us. We understand paying a fee for a fitness club, country club or nightclub. We pay a fee to join any group that creates value for the members because we get something in return. A tax seems like a penalty for being a citizen instead of an opportunity. An investment is a chance to build something for everyone, not a black hole for everyone.
To make this work, the government has to be totally transparent (it has not had a great history in the sunshine department as of late). Our leaders have to get rid of waste and treat our investment like a real investment, because that is what it is, or should be. If it were an investment, Wall Street may not be a good model, either, as we have seen.
It is not like we are painting black stripes on a white horse, trying to fool people into thinking it is zebra. The goal is to make sure the money we pay is viewed as an investment – by the people paying it and by the government using it. Even the people who collect the money would see what they do in a different light, perhaps, if it were no longer a tax, but an investment.
“Hello, I’m from the U.S. Investment Service.” is a lot better than, “Hello, I’m from the I.R.S.”
When the biggest lobby group in DC is us, then our “taxes” will be an investment. Until then, coo coo ka, chew.
