Government spending and taxing the poor

Whatever happened to community involvement? I remember local organizations that were holding fund raisers, restoring parks, and generally taking the bull by the horns with their own hands when I was a child. Maybe it's just California, but community involvement seems to have morphed into lobbying the government and working to pass new taxes. Case in point: Sacramento's American River Parkway - "the parkway doesn't have enough funding to purchase equipment, do maintenance, make capital improvements and acquire land".

Which is better for a community? Higher taxes supporting improved community amenities, or voluntary civic involvement producing improved community amenities? Might a community that improved a park area through their own voluntary labor and monetary contributions, take better care of said park, appreciate said park more, and possibly utilize said park more? On the other hand, raising taxes on folks who don't want to improve the park - could that mean increased strain on taxpayers experiencing economic difficulties? Might it drive marginal taxpayers to another community where taxes are lower?

Oh, sure, no one wants to think about the poor - and, if they do, they say that they are doing these things to benefit the poor. The local city of Rancho Cordova has been gentrifying. They are trying to drive out businesses that cater to the poor - thrift stores, check cashing places, junkyards. Government exists for the benefit of the whole community, not as a tool for taxing the poor, middle class, and wealthy to provide amenities that the ruling class desires.

I propose that taxpayers who cannot afford - in time or money - to utilize an amenity, should not be required to pay for that amenity. If taxpayers cannot garden in their backyards, they should not be taxed for government gardens. That doesn't mean that government cannot provide gardens - it just means that the should raise the lower threshhold of taxable income before they use public funds for luxuries. If your poorest taxpayers cannot afford to eat, you do not buy food with civic funds. If the poorest taxpayers cannot afford to own cars, you put your government employees on public transit.

This does not mean that communities should live without amenities. It means that those amenities should be provided, voluntarily, without tax money. Hey, maybe we should offer low-wage taxpayers the option of performing community service hours instead of paying taxes. Wouldn't an hour of labor have more benefit to the community than 8% local tax and 25% federal tax on $10/hour worth of wages?

For wealthier taxpayers, lowering the tax burden might actually free them from long hours on the job, allowing them the luxury of volunteering to cleanup local parks. Or maybe not - because, maybe, just maybe, they don't want parks as much as they want something else.

Sacramento is building a new animal shelter, an honorable endeavor. They have provided $295,000 in funding for art works in the new facility. A local taxpayer, earning about $30k a year, died last year of being uninsured. She was an artist, who would surely have donated work to such a worthy cause. But she can't, because she couldn't afford health insurance, private school tuition, living expenses, and taxes. She couldn't choose not to pay the taxes, she wouldn't choose not to pay the tuition, so she scrimped on health insurance, and it killed her. The diagnosis on her death certificate was a preventable cancer, but what really killed her was lack of insurance, avoiding preventive care for fear of the costs, and waiting too long to seek treatment. Her child was left orphaned. Perhaps she should have made different choices, but those are the choices she made, and those are the choices many low-income taxpayers make.

The irony is, she would probably have supported a new tax for the parkway. If I have to pay a dime to get the government to squeeze an extra thousand dollars out of a wealthy person to fund something that I want, but don't want to pay for, well, the government will help me do it. What sense does that make?