Nathan Scandella (personal)

What is Patriotic?

With our national (public) debt skyrocketing, and ousted Republicans looking for something to cling to, having been faced with the failure of most of their party platform, the issue of patriotism has arisen again. This time, we're talking about whether it's patriotic to pay taxes. Or more specifically, to pay higher taxes. First, let's define the term here:

patriotic: Feeling, expressing, or inspired by love for one's country.

As paying taxes is a measurable act, expression is more relevant than feeling, or inspiration, here. The second key here is the focus on one's country, in my case, the USA. So, we're debating whether or not paying taxes is an expression of love for the USA.

Let's look at this from a few different angles. When you pay taxes, the lion's share of that money is being spent on American jobs, and American products. Certainly, a higher share than is represented by the average spending habits of private consumers (when spending their after-tax dollars). So, taxes support our country. If that's not a legitimate expression of love, I'm not sure what is. My mother may have overspent on the high-end cookware I was selling for my summer job when I was 19, but by giving me my first sale, she most certainly was expressing her love. No contest.

While there is plenty of waste in government, the majority of government functions serve some social purpose. Infrastructure, law enforcement, consumer protection, education. Private sector industries may or may not be more "efficient", but it simply can't be argued that as high a proportion of the activity is targeted at socially beneficial causes. Movie theatres, nail salons, jewelry stores, hedge funds, cosmetic surgeons, payday loan stores. I'm not saying that these entities shouldn't exist, but you can't make the argument that money spent there is more likely to improve conditions for most Americans.

The quintessential example of patriotism seems to be supporting our military. But, the military is a government function, and is one of the government's largest expenses. Why is supporting the military patriotic, but not being willing to contribute more of your tax dollars? Is the military really the only government entity that's working for its citizens? That's a hard distinction to make.

Most people consider volunteering (domestically) to be patriotic. But, how is giving one's time fundamentally from giving one's money? In our society, everyone has a monetary value of their time. As I see it, giving time and giving money are very similar, related by the numerical value of your "hourly rate". Of course, your tax dollars aren't used perfectly efficiently. But, I do volunteer work. When I'm at a tree-planting party in Seattle, and the kids there spend 1/3 of their time chatting and goofing off, does that nullify the benefit of the 2/3 of the time they actually spend working? No. Would it be better if they worked hard all the time? Absolutely, but the inefficiency is part of being human. Volunteers have it, government has it, and so does private business. Nevertheless, if giving your time to domestic causes is patriotic, then I think being willing to pay taxes has to be, too.

Finally, consider another possible use of one's money: charitable giving. Giving money to a charity is considerable "charitable", just as donating your time is. If willingness to give money to charities is charitable, being willing to give money to US government causes has to also be patriotic.

None of this means you have to want to give all your money to Uncle Sam. And it doesn't mean that you can't be a patriotic person if you are in favor of keeping taxes low. But, the specific act of supporting a move to a more responsible (higher) tax rate is absolutely, positively a patriotic position to take.

Let's be completely clear. There are lots of good people who favor lower taxes. But, that is not what makes them good. The vast majority of those who favor lower taxes do so for the primary reason that they wish to keep more of their paycheck. Selfishness and greed are much better descriptions of that viewpoint than patriotism.

Posted at 04:20PM Jun 09, 2009 by Nathan in Politics  |  Comments[0]