Way back in the American Colonial days, Great Brittan passed a law that allowed the East India Tea company to export tea directly to America. This act reduced taxes on tea in Brittan to provide economic advantage to the East India Tea Company and caused taxes in America, including those on tea, to be raised. We Americans felt that we had a right to have a say in the taxes we paid and rebelled by putting on Indian costumes and throwing an entire shipload of tea into Boston Harbor. As the catchy chant of "no taxation without representation" allegedly took hold, several economic escalations meant that this act eventually resulted in the American Revolution.

In response to President Obama's plan to raise the income tax on individuals making over $250,000 and the billions of dollars in economic stimulus going to private industry and local governments, there has been a lot of noise about taxation. Michelle Bachman asks "If our founders thought taxation without representation was bad, what would they think of representation with taxation?" On April 15th, there are always people who picket the US Postal Service and boycott taxes. This year, there was a small movement called "tea bagging" where people who didn't like the taxes their representatives would be voting on waved tea bags in the air and tried to make a connection between their actions and the Boston Tea Party.

These tax boycotters say that taxes are unconstitutional and that there is no requirement to pay them. Article I, section 8 of the constitution gives that argument a hard time:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States;

The tea baggers claim that representation with taxation is bad, but taxation with representation is one of many things the Revolution was fighting for.

Incitement of treason aside, there are some problems with arguing against taxation. Lets contemplate some alternate funding mechanisms.

Taxes build roads. Without taxes, all roads would have to be toll roads. That doesn't seem so bad for interstate highways and local through ways when toll roads are miles apart; high speed limits would get you to your destination rapidly despite stopping to toss your change in the hopper. But if the entire downtown street system is toll-based, there would either have to be a tollbooth at every corner or at every entrance to the city street system. If you think rush-hour traffic is bad, just wait until the 10 drivers ahead of you have to dig for change to get to the next red light.

Taxes build bridges. I'll admit that this is closely related to roads, but there are some different hurdles to jump with bridges. Right now it costs $6 for a car to get from San Francisco to Sausalito. If you want to make that trip without taking a bridge, well... I just checked, and you can't. There are some bridges in the area that are not toll bridges, but they're miles out of the way. Many large cities, ironically with majority liberal populations, have gotten used to the idea of paying for the privilege to enter and leave the city, but people across the country would grumble loudly if they had to pay to go to work every day.

Taxes provide public safety. Remember that guy who was driving erratically and you had to swerve suddenly to avoid him, almost hitting a car in the next lane? Remember he got pulled over for drunk driving a few miles later and you were glad to be a little safer? Without taxes, there are three options I can think of for road safety. Either nobody would be on the roads to protect you from that guy or you'd be dealing with private security companies who would not be held to the same standards as the State Troopers, or their salaries would have to be paid by fines and tolls. Many people believe that the police have ticket quotas that need to be met every month and I'm not going to speak directly to that but just imagine if your salary depended directly on the number of tickets you wrote every day.

Taxes provide public education. Let's ignore the complete lack of public schools for the time being. Anyone who has a college degree can tell you that they are expensive and college degrees from private institutions doubly so. The University of Minnesota currently charges about $400 per credit. That tuition money is directly matched by the State of Minnesota because the state, through the elected representatives of its population, has determined that college education is good for the general welfare of that population. In addition to tuition-matching, the University also receives $125M from the State. Without these public funds from taxes, tuition at this state university would have to more than double, placing a college education out of reach for many Minnesotans. There would also be a distinct lack of Federal grants and student loans regardless of the institution in question, making that education more expensive for all citizens.

Taxes provide law enforcement. When I was a kid, my house was broken into while we were out of town for the weekend. Threat of jail is what keeps most people from stealing from other people. Without centralized law enforcement, we would have to rely on private industry to provide local officers, judges, and prisons. Those people would have to be paid through some billing mechanism, much like a tax, and you can bet that people who were able to pay more would get more patrol officers and fewer complaints against them.

Taxes provide laws. Law enforcement is irrelevant without laws to enforce. The representation in national government that this country fought so long and so hard to obtain is built by the people, for the people and on the backs of the people. Our taxes pay for enforcement and protection of the constitution, our nation, and our way of life. Private industry providing constitutional protection would lead directly to representation of wealth and land because there is no profit in representing the poor and homeless.

In short, a country without taxes would look a lot like the old American West. Roads would be build at random, justice would be served at random, infrastructure would be built at random, education would take place at random. If you hadn't already died of polio or smallpox, you probably wouldn't be reading this blog, or any blog, because the Internet would never have been funded by DARPA and you may never have learned to read. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said "I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."

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