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Brains on ice

It is a fine madhouse we live in!
The mindless hatred of taxes is a religion. 
The notion that privately-owned business can do no evil,
and that government can do no good, is credal. 

So let us pretend.
Let us pretend that we could, indeed,
cut our tax rates in half. 
There would be half as much money for public services:
half as much for Social Security payments, half as much
for schools, half as much for public parks, and fire departments,
and police protection, and the military, and health care
and bridges and pothole repair and interstate highways
and air traffic control and scientific research.

At the same time, there would be more poverty for seniors,
more unemployment, more untreated health problems,
more uncontrolled crime, and more runaway fires down the block.
There would be fewer customers in the stores, lower prices
for agricultural output, fewer cars sold, less eating out,
more bankruptcies, more squatters, and sewage treatment
plants that let more shit run directly to the river. 

Who would win? 

The most liveable societies are not those with the fewest
public services, with the lowest taxes, with the deteriorating
infrastructure, with minimal social involvement, and with
the smallest investment in the common good.  To the contrary!

The most liveable societies are not those
in which every citizen has a gun, and a hatred for taxes,
and a brain put on ice, preserved for the resurrection.

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