Don't like taxes? Try living in the Congo

“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, 1902-1932

It’s April 15: How about a tax party?

By Nancy Larson Shapiro
Mankato Free Press

Nancy Larson Shapiro is an educator who directed Teachers & Writers Collaborative, a nonprofit in New York City for 30 years.

Having recently returned from a trip to West Africa, I am dismayed by the scenes of “tea partiers” railing against our government, sometimes with distressingly disrespectful signs and language, directed particularly at President Obama.

As I listen to their complaints, I think back to the days in the 1950’s and 60’s when I grew up in Mankato, Minnesota.

My mother raised three children with government support — the aid to dependent children she received after my father died of injuries suffered in World War II. My friends and I received excellent educations at Lincoln Elementary and Junior High and — the then only — Mankato High School, where we could also participate in sports and vocational and arts activities.

I recall a relative who was on the school board when the high school was built saying that the board consciously built a state-of-the-art facility for the baby boomers coming along (thank you!). Not only was the viola I played in the school orchestra provided by the school for free, the whole school experience was free — well, not really “free” of course (more about taxes later), but there were no fees to attend — as there are in many African countries, meaning that the poor remain uneducated.

Our education in Mankato continued in an array of community programs provided by nonprofit institutions — whose tax-exempt status helped keep them viable, providing a critical link between the private and public sectors — like the YMCA, clubs and churches. I left Mankato to attend Minnesota’s world-renowned public, land grant University of Minnesota, where the tuition was very reasonable.

These memories bring me back to today’s anti-government protesters, who seem to think they can handle their own and the country’s needs individually and who clamor against taxes, claiming our government does nothing for us. For them, I would suggest a trip to the Republic of Congo. Money is not the problem in the Congo, which collects millions of dollars a day from oil companies paying for drilling rights. Very little of that money, however, goes to build infrastructure or to benefit the people, while the country’s president is one of the largest landowners in France.

In the Congo I walked on the dirt streets — only a few roads are paved — or drank my bottled water — most people have no running water; they must wait for a truck carrying potable water — or watched the glow of kerosene lamps — most people have no electricity — or stared at the garbage piled high or burning beside the road, or talked with a man who had been jailed for trying to expose the corruption in the country.

I began composing a mental list of what we take for granted in the U.S.

We turn on a faucet for drinkable water; we can travel all over this vast country on excellent highways; we have good public schools in most communities; we have sewer systems and trash collection and disposal; we have public libraries; we have philanthropic organizations that provide myriad free programs.

We have an almost infallible electrical grid that provides electricity to almost everyone; we have the most up-to-date technological capacity to run millions of cell phones and computers; we have bridges, tunnels, subways, buses, trains, planes that provide efficient and often low-cost transportation; we have local parks and playgrounds; we have a vast national park system that preserves the planet’s natural wonders; we have a Constitution that protects our rights, including the freedom to protest against our own government; we have the security provided by civilian and military law enforcement. And, yes, we have government programs to help the poor, such as food stamps and school lunches, to aid special groups such as returning war veterans, and to assist just about everybody such as Social Security, Medicare, and, perhaps now, health care.

Warren Buffet points out that American businesses owe much of their success simply to being located in this highly functioning country.

While no one relishes paying taxes, it may help to keep some of the returns we get for our tax investments in mind.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. — who willed his estate to the U.S. government — said, “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society” — the saying now atop the Internal Revenue Service building.

I say that true patriotism begins with respect, with a recognition of the vital role a responsible government plays in all our lives and with a willingness to pay our fair share.