Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Holding Everyone Up, Not Dragging Everyone Down
Mrs. FLJerseyBoy and I live in a suburban subdivision; we call it, jokingly, a principality. Why? You just have to look at a map of the city limits of the one big city in our county. Our neighborhood is an island within the county limits, surrounded on all sides by residents of the city. People across the street get municipal utilities (including electricity and garbage/recycling pickup). We, on the other hand, get from the city the one utility otherwise unavailable to us: water. We contract with a private waste-management company, and we belong to a rural electric cooperatiive, and we all have septic tanks. For reasons which are probably described as "historical" (translation: no one any longer remembers why), the neighborhood association has simply opted out of the annexation into the city which has occurred nearly everywhere else in the county.
Ah, yes. The neighborhood association. We pay annual dues to the association, as do all other homeowners here. And what does the neighborhood-association membership buy us?
Now I want you to imagine for a moment a noisy minority within our neighborhood. They believe that the neighborhood association dues are a form of socialist extortion. After all, if there's a pothole in a street on which they do not live, why should they have to help pay for it? If they're happy with the landscaping of the entryway, why should they have to contribute to its upkeep just because someone else is unhappy? If Joe Blow a block over decides he wants better street lighting, well, let him call an electrician and set it up. (These objections are sometimes couched in faux-altruistic terms, like, If I want service X, why should thou have to pay for it? It doesn't make any difference. It boils down to the same thing.)
And so on.
I've been thinking a lot recently about taxes, and the various right-wing objections to them. Whether it's gasoline taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, whatever -- the arguments are the same, boiling down to: Why should I have to help pay for services which I myself do not need or use or even want?
The answer, I think, is that by choosing to live in the US, you implicitly agree to pay neighborhood-association dues, on a grand scale. You agree -- it's explicit in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- that we must support one another, even if we ourselves do not need the support, because (a) we or our descendants may need it sometime, and (b) the neighborhood is better off (economically, and in terms of the quality of life) in direct proportion to the extent to which we all contribute to its upkeep, its social activities, its governance.
What this boils down to is standing the old right-wing admonition to lefty malcontents on its head: If you don't like the way the United States has historically committed to uplifting the disadvantaged, go back where you came from. We sure as hell don't need you here, you selfish bastard.
Ah, yes. The neighborhood association. We pay annual dues to the association, as do all other homeowners here. And what does the neighborhood-association membership buy us?
- Repairs to neighborhood streets.
- Landscaping of the neighborhood entrance.
- Participation in setting the rules by which the properties in our neighborhood are governed.
- Participation (strictly voluntary) in various neighborhood activities throughout the year: various annual parades, cookouts, and the like.
- A certain amount of political clout, in that the neighborhood can be said to speak with one voice on issues which concern us.
Now I want you to imagine for a moment a noisy minority within our neighborhood. They believe that the neighborhood association dues are a form of socialist extortion. After all, if there's a pothole in a street on which they do not live, why should they have to help pay for it? If they're happy with the landscaping of the entryway, why should they have to contribute to its upkeep just because someone else is unhappy? If Joe Blow a block over decides he wants better street lighting, well, let him call an electrician and set it up. (These objections are sometimes couched in faux-altruistic terms, like, If I want service X, why should thou have to pay for it? It doesn't make any difference. It boils down to the same thing.)
And so on.
I've been thinking a lot recently about taxes, and the various right-wing objections to them. Whether it's gasoline taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, whatever -- the arguments are the same, boiling down to: Why should I have to help pay for services which I myself do not need or use or even want?
The answer, I think, is that by choosing to live in the US, you implicitly agree to pay neighborhood-association dues, on a grand scale. You agree -- it's explicit in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- that we must support one another, even if we ourselves do not need the support, because (a) we or our descendants may need it sometime, and (b) the neighborhood is better off (economically, and in terms of the quality of life) in direct proportion to the extent to which we all contribute to its upkeep, its social activities, its governance.
What this boils down to is standing the old right-wing admonition to lefty malcontents on its head: If you don't like the way the United States has historically committed to uplifting the disadvantaged, go back where you came from. We sure as hell don't need you here, you selfish bastard.
