Unless you're living in a yurt in Mongolia, you know it's Tax Day in the United States. Seriously, folks, the whole world knows when taxes are due in the United States because we're such a bunch of whiners about paying Uncle Sam. Get over it already!
Why are we so nuts about taxes in this country?
The way some people act, you would think that Americans pay excessive taxes or that we get nothing from our investment. Neither is the truth. The typical American taxpayer pays less than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average, and those taxes pay for such frivolous things as roads, schools, fire departments, and national defense. (Try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps without any roads to drive on, asshats.) Taxes are part of being a civilized nation, and I actually feel a little patriotic when I finish filing mine.
This idea that the United States is made up of 300 million or so completely separate individuals who have no obligation to anyone but themselves and maybe one or two close family members (but don't push it, Uncle Frank, because you totally should have seen that layoff coming) is destroying our society. Not gay marriage. Not abortion. Not latte-swilling, Volvo-driving, church-eschewing liberals like me. It's individualism on steroids that is taking us down. We have responsibilities to each other, and we're welching on them.
Since the "Reagan Revolution" we've been told that poor people are to blame for their situation and rich people got that way entirely through their own hard work and are therefore entitled to keep all but the tiniest sliver for themselves. That healthcare is a privilege, not a right. That money spent on yachts and fifth homes will eventually reach all of us. That "welfare queens" cost taxpayers more money than tax-dodging corporations do. That ketchup is a vegetable.
No. No. No. No. No. And for the love of condiments, no.
What Barack Obama is trying to do with his tax reforms does not remotely qualify as the road to "European-style socialism", as some of these stalwart faux-conservatives have tried to characterize it. At its most extreme, it is an effort to return to earlier days of less inequality. Hardly the stuff of Rand-ian nightmare. (Confidential to Tax Protesters: You'll know that socialism has arrived when we all get four weeks of paid vacation, single-payer healthcare, universal access to affordable childcare and university, and guaranteed parental and family leave. God help us, because that does sound dreadful.)
All of which is a very longwinded way of saying that I am not protesting on Tax Day. I'm not even bitching about it. I paid my taxes and did my part, and that feels good. Much better than teabagging, in fact. But, you know, to each his own.