The Year of the Tax

As I predicted in my 2010 Preview version of this blog, I predict that this will be the year of the taxes; even for "poor folks". I sincerely believe that we will be taxed upon our taxes, and the tax money will be misappropriated, and that the high taxes will hurt the economy; not keep us eco-friendly nor healthy. I am betting that we will be taxed on our "junk food" this year. I am guessing that our utilities will drastically rise due to stiffer taxes on utility companies. I have a gut feeling that even the poor will pay much more taxes this year, and that I could go on and on about what and who will be taxed and really not get to the gist of what I am leading into.

And what I am leading into is a list of things that I would like to see taxed this year. And first on my list, I would like to see lying taxed. Yes you read it right, I think we should tax lies. And I use the same logic that will be used to tax and pay for health care, ala cigarettes. I use the same logic that will lead to "junk food" and cheeseburgers being taxed. And that logic is that since overweight people are a big chunk of health care cost, we should tax their habits; like we do now with smokers.

So why not tax lies and liars? And I'm not talking about high school boys or fishermen; but people who lie on tax forms and welfare checks. Look at the majority of the costs these lies cost the taxpayer. I would be interested to know how many frivolous insurance claims, as well as unemployment claims, exist, and to what tune it amounts to in monetary terms. How much do we spend on social programs that people lie about in order to recieve?

And look at the price of security that is spent on preventing lies. Look at all of the costs of extra security codes, identity protection, security guards, extra office workers, legal documentation, so on and so forth, that is spent to prevent or protect against dishonesty.

But I guess some of that enters the realm of theft, so lets tax theft also. Consider how much extra we spend trying to protect ourselves from hackers,criminals, and petty thieves. Surveillance cameras, extra codes on our debit cards, and the like, all have costs that are passed on to the consumer. So let's tax lies and theft.

Actually, let's tax crime. Look at the cost of not just our penal systems and judicial systems, but the costs of crime; on all levels, especially personal and business.

And there is no need to stop there, we should tax immorality. Look at the costs for divorces and infidelity and slander and malice and such. Not just legal fees, counseling costs, and psychologist fees; but all of the dollars and cents that it costs us to protect ourselves and our families. This could be broken down to various level of minutiae, but you get the point.

So we should tax morality. And the precedent is being set for such to occur. We are forced to pay higher costs and taxes so that we can be a "green" nation. We are taxed to pay for overused and outdated programs that should help the needy but instead benefit the greedy and the lazy...our morality is being taxed right now in many ways, if we would just examine the semantics...

I will digess on the taxation of stupidity or just plain, old meanness. I will not even venture into the realm of laziness. And like all of the other "moral" taxes that occur now or that I am proposing, only those who abide by the law or try to be decent, will be harmed; so there is no real pragmatic manner by which to tax the guilty or immoral.

So I guess we cannot really tax many of the things that I am proposing, but we can pay attention to the governmental rhetoric. And we can all try to do better by each other, wherever we may be at any particular moment. And if we are afraid of being too moral or accidentally resembling anything Christ-like, we can just rationalize it away and fool ourselves into thinking that our checkbooks and government spending will pick up our slack; duty before faith, so to speak.

And while this may not be the most cognitively cohesive piece written on taxes and morality, maybe you can glean a little something from my rant. And if not, don't sue me, just tax me...