To the Editor:
I’d like those in Congress who equate taxes with original sin to acknowledge that taxes are really just prices. We pay for the amenities and services we take for granted. No one goes into a grocery store or a restaurant thinking that a head of lettuce or a Kobe beef steak will be free. We are charged prices, and we pay them.
Some of the things our taxes buy for legislators are their salaries, office space, aides, heat and light, health care, plumbing, cafeterias, gyms and parking. When they travel, they count on publicly financed air traffic control and pilot training to keep the planes in the air without colliding. They count on clean water, electricity, safe food, decent roads and bridges, and people who clean offices, bathrooms and hallways.
Outside of the halls of Congress there are police, firefighters, schools and libraries. These are all things bought with our taxes. Our taxes are nothing more or less than the prices we pay for what we want.
Liane Ellison Norman
Pittsburgh, Dec. 14, 2010
Note from KBJ: Who but an anarchist objects to these things? What most Americans object to are (1) lavish junkets for legislators, (2) welfare for the lazy and irresponsible, (3) welfare for corporations (think farm subsidies), (4) bureaucratic waste, and (5) spending on offensive art.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 