An Alternate Witness

Taxes are supposed to support government programs to support and protect the people served by that government. If that were truly the case, I wouldn't mind paying taxes at all. As the Finns and Swedes say, we gladly pay 50% in taxes, because the government takes good care of us. Or as Elton John has said, he has no interest in moving to the U.S. where the taxes are lower, because his taxes support the poor in South London who buy his records and make him rich.

Half a century ago, the CEO of General Motors made fifty times what his average worker made, and paid well over half that money back to the government. Now the CEOs of major companies pay easily 500 times what their average workers make, and pay far less than 50% of that money back in taxes. Yes, there are philanthropists like Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and the Ford Foundation who are privately distributing their wealth all over this country and the world; they are major contributors to the fact that Americans, per capita, make more private donations to people and programs in impoverished nations than the citizens of any other nation in the world.

But if we taxed Bill Gates for half his yearly net income, he'd still have millions of dollars to put into philanthropy, and I suspect that his taxes could almost single-handedly provide universal health care in the United States. Instead, take a look at this report of UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, "Child Poverty In Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being In Rich Countries" (http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf). Of the 21 countries surveyed, the United States ranks in the bottom third in 4 of the 5 categories for which US ranking was provided, including 20th in Family and Peer Relationships, and Behaviours and Risks, and 21st--that's last of the richest nations!--in Health and Safety! That's worse than even the significantly poorer former Soviet Bloc nations of Poland and the Czech Republic. According to this report, 22% of American children under 18 live in homes taking in less than 50% of the median national income; that's dead last of the nations polled. One in eight American 15-year-olds polled has less than 10 books in his or her household. The United States has among the highest rates of infant mortality and accidental child deaths of these rich nations. At 75%, the United States has the 5th lowest rate of 15-19-year-olds in school. American children are judged to have the second worst relationships with parents and peers of the 21 nations surveyed. American children have the worst health behaviours of the nations surveyed, the highest child obesity rate, and the highest teen pregnancy rate. One in 5 American children rate their own health as 'fair or poor.'

Could we not be using our tax money to improve these numbers? Why are we not?

Instead of making the richest nation in the world the best place in the world to be a child, we are engaged in a quagmire in Iraq. We were told that fighting the "terrorists" there would keep us safer here. This is unlikely to be the case. Our arrogance in Iraq has cost us more friends than it has made us; this conflict has undermined our soft power and image in the world, and made us look like the big bully on the block. And we are suffering at home for this war every day.

The money we have spent in Iraq could have provided health insurance to nearly 250 million American children, or have built over 3.7 million units of public housing for the millions of hurricane displaced or otherwise impoverished and homeless persons, including children, in the United States. Or the money we spent in Iraq could have paid for a year's Head Start expenses for 55 million children, or hired over 7 million new teachers, or provided over 20 million 4-year scholarships for Americans to attend college. You can see a running tally of these figures at http://costofwar.com/index.html. Or we could use the money we're spending in Iraq to reduce world hunger by half in 10 years, immunize children around the world for that time, stem the tide of AIDS in the world, and still have money left over (http://costofwar.com/numbers.html)! Any one of those things would improve our image and thereby increase our national security far more than any war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran or elsewhere.

As you pay your taxes, I challenge you to consider where that money is going, and whether you are comfortable supporting the actions your money supports. Because if you're not, it's time to take ownership of that money and of your government--for the people, by the people--and demand change!