4.
| Education. Arizonans spend 4 to 8 times
more for state and local schools than they spend for all federal activities
in health, welfare, education and labor. This doesn't include local expenditures
for health and welfare, which would raise the ratio to 5 and 10 times,
respectively.
Streets & Highways. Arizonans spend
up to three times as much for construction of local and state roads and
streets as they spend for the entire federal highway program. |
ALL GOVERNMENT IS SOCIALISM?
General denunciations of "big government" and
"high taxes" take on a superficial appearance when the details of government
are picked up and examined one by one. The editors of Human Events
Magazine, who talk about "Tax Freedom Day" as "the day you stop working
for the government", often hit this simplistic theme: "32% taxes equals
32% socialism. " In his book, The Conscience of a Conservative,
a well-known Arizona author expressed this philosophy very bluntly:
| "The average American is ... working one-third
of the time for government: a third of what he produces is not available
for his own use but is confiscated and used by others who have not earned
it. Let us note that by this measure the United States is already one-third
'socialized'." |
This statement is often repeated, and yet my analysis
indicates beyond question that less than 1% -- if that -- of the
Carpenter and Barrister tax money goes to finance "socialism", a term which
properly means government ownership of factories, railroads and
other basic means of production and distribution. The money Arizonans pay
to buy national defense, the Post Office, parks, forests, schools, courts,
highways, police, and fire protection does not buy socialism. It
buys public services a free people in a free enterprise system
want and could not do without.
CONCLUSION
These two newsletters have not been written to
argue for more spending by federal or state and local governments. We must
constantly search for economies and reduced taxes at all levels of government,
and I pledge to do my part.
Economy should be our goal, but democracy cannot
long survive if our freely-elected governments at all levels are treated
and thought of as remote, inhuman, Frankenstein monsters which seize hard
earned money from their helpless subjects, giving nothing in return. The
purpose of these reports has been to help you arrive at a better understanding
of what you receive for your tax money.
The people who talk about "Tax Freedom Day" have
a catchy way of dramatizing the amount of taxes paid by people like the
Carpenters and Barristers, but how much sense does it make to talk about
slices and ignore the size of the whole "pie"? People who grumble about
the heavy burden of taxes they carry should consider this startling fact,
buried in the Statistical Abstract of the United States:
| Americans today, after they have paid
all their federal, state, county, city, school district and other taxes,
all parking fines and import duties -- every dime collected by any unit
of government anywhere -- have left for their personal use 65% more
real income (after deducting for inflation) than they had in the "good
old days" of 1929. |
Are the Carpenters and Barristers better off because
of the taxes they pay? I say, emphatically, yes.
|
