THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412020614
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
In 1904, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said that ``taxes are what we pay for civilized society.'' Today, he couldn't win a job as dogcatcher with that kind of attitude. First, because we aren't willing to pay enough taxes to hire a dogcatcher, but really because an increasing number of Americans think we're buying more civilization than we need.
It is certainly disquieting that the Holmes quote is carved over the portal of the Internal Revenue Service. After trying to decipher a tax form or enduring an audit, few would describe the IRS as a civilized institution. But hostility to taxes is nothing new. It has a long and glorious American pedigree, dating to the Boston Tea Party and Shays' Rebellion.
And after the recent election, there's no question that anti-tax fever is upon the land. Promises of tax relief distinguished the campaigns of most candidates who wound up winners Nov. 8. The Contract With America that House Republicans now must make good on promises a middle-class tax cut, capital-gains indexing and other tax breaks.
All the ambitious, government-bashing politicians - who now have government jobs - were obviously onto something. Taxpayers vote, and voters hate politicians who won't promise to ease the bite. Unfortunately, the same voters who want lower taxes also want to retain the government services they receive.
In 1775, the rallying cry was ``no taxation without representation.'' In 1995, we may find ourselves with a government whose motto is ``plenty of civilization with no taxation.''
Virginia is a prime example of the paradox. It is a virulently anti-tax state, but it's also among the chief recipients of government largesse. It's near the top of states in percent of population employed by government. Its military installations run on tax dollars, and so do its prosperous northern suburbs, home to bureaucrats and Beltway bandits alike. Its government employees are paid out of the public coffers, retire on government pensions, get treated for their ills by government doctors in government hospitals.
The same pattern can be seen across the country. Angry anti-tax voters drive on government roads to government schools to cast ballots for politicians who promise to give them more entitlements and public works while taxing them less.
Unfortunately, this does not compute. Holmes, alas, was right. To have less taxes - without incurring huge, metastatic deficits - we will have to settle for less civilization. Less help for the helpless, less Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. Fewer tax breaks for middle class and corporation alike. Fewer cops and fewer prisons and a weaker military to keep the barbarians at bay. We will have to learn to live with worse schools, roads and bridges, with inadequate sewers and parks going to seed, with decaying ports and outmoded airports.
Tax critics always say it's only the frills they want to cut - not essentials like defense, Social Security and Medicare. But tax revenues barely cover the cost of defense and entitlements at present. The money for all those frills they rail against is already being borrowed. We didn't accumulate a national debt approaching the $5 trillion mark by living within our means.
The Republicans used to be the party of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. But they realized that's why they rarely won office. Now they're pleased to compete with the Democrats in the fiscal irresponsibility derby. If Democrats want to increase programs without increasing taxes to pay for them, Republicans want to cut taxes without cutting enough programs to cover the shortfall.
Some societies have taxed themselves into oblivion, but more have borrowed themselves into the poorhouse. And tax-cutters, in their zeal, sometimes forget there's a third alternative that may be even worse. Some societies have refused to fund civilization and so have lost it.
In her recent book, ``The Road from the Past,'' Ina Caro tells the cautionary tale of the city of Narbonne and how it entered the Dark Ages. Its fate is that of the Roman Empire in microcosm. Narbonne was an affluent and civilized Roman provincial city too far from the center to defend as waves of barbarian invasion swept the empire. It eventually was abandoned to the unwashed.
``The Visigoths wanted to enjoy the sumptuous life of the Romans; not destroy it. But they did not know how to administer the complex society they had conquered, or how to maintain the sophisticated physical plant created by the Romans. Illiterate, they could not read or understand the Latin laws; they did not know how to collect taxes or keep accounts. Ironically, it was because of the Visigoths' inability to collect taxes that Narbonne's Roman citizens, happy not to pay, accepted the barbarian rulers. Without the taxes, however, the barbarians were unable to maintain the city's roads, canals, aqueducts, water supply, sewers, public baths, schools and libraries.''
Today's ax-wielders may look like saviors to those incensed at the high cost of government. And maybe they're right. Maybe we've got more civilization than we can use. But we have shown little inclination to do without it. And the condition of our infrastructure, our justice system, our schools and even the legions who protect us ought to give us pause.
Maybe the anti-tax zealots aren't going to save the empire but sack it. Maybe they are actually the new Visigoths, willing to trade popularity and borrowed prosperity today for a slow decline into barbarism tomorrow. Until they can show how the numbers add up, they deserve to be regarded with a healthy skepticism. by CNB