Why the right loves charity and hates taxes
(No, not because one is voluntary and the other compulsory. No one loves compulsory this and compulsory that more than a conservative.)
"Let those who want more taxes just pay more, and leave the rest of us alone," the conservative said. So I said:
The thing about public investments in education, infrastructure, and the like, is that ALL of the public gets to use these benefits. Would the anti-tax crowd be scrupulous about not using the benefits they didn't pay for, anymore than the people who are too poor to pay taxes? No, those who refused to chip in would feel entitled to be on the public dole,-be protected by police they didn't help subsidize, drive on public roads they didn't help pay for, benefit from public-funded research and services they refused to support and which they spat upon as waste when other people (read: unworthy people?) used them. How, I ask you, can those unfortunate enough to be so poor they can't contribute to the public good be any worse than- or, really, anywhere near as bad as- those who can pay, but refuse to?
The concept of the members of a society sharing the costs of its civilization implies equality in the rights and inherent worth of this society's members, regardless of what choices they make, what income they claim, what pedigree/political affiliation/moral inventory they have. The conservative's ethos of charity over universal taxation sets it up that his aid is generous, beneficent, and undeserved, and the recipient is undeserving and insufficiently grateful. The donor can see himself as rightfully dominant over the helpless and passive recipient,-his pet, as it were.
Tax-supported civilization, on the other hand, by educating the poor as well as the rich, assuring rights and protections for the poor as well as the rich, blurs the distinctions of social rank. Those blessed by greater wealth or shrewdness or skill or ambition are then deprived of the additional and unnecessary luxury of lording over the clumsy and the ill-raised.
Some people will always prosper over others, but they don't need to set up an anti-universal-taxation/pro-condescending-charity ethos to exacerbate the inequality and increase their advantage still more. They don't need to use their status and money to undercut the already-struggling, assuring they will be even more poorly prepared; that would be just plain cruel.
The poorer the poor get, the more resentful, suspicious, and hostile the prosperous become toward them. The wider the disparity between rich and poor, the more resentful ("envious!" according to the right) the poor become. More equal cultures experience much less resentment, much less distrust, much less class hostility and breakdown of social cohesion (Wilson and Pickett, THE SPIRIT LEVEL). The right's antipathy to universal compulsory taxation for broad public benefit is as short-sighted as their pirate version of capitalism.
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