Terry Cowgill

Death To All Taxes

April 15, 2008 on 12:44 pm | In National, Oddball |

Leave it to the NYT op-ed page to tell us something we already know. No one likes taxes. But in a commentary today, author Richard Conniff has a notion: since no one likes taxes, let’s just change the name and then there won’t be so much objection.

Of course, the piece is tongue-in-cheek. And I understand that Conniff is trying to make a larger point about the responsibility we all have to make society better and, yes, sometimes that requires tax increases. Who could disagree with that?

But his insistence that it’s the word that people object to rather than the concept strikes me as naive. As I pointed out in a post about labels more than a year ago, almost any word or phrase used to describe something regarded as objectionable or deficient by enough people will eventually take on a negative connotation by the sheer force of repeated use.

So changing the name of taxes, with its “punitive overtones,” to “dues” might make the concept seem a little more palatable. But over time, “dues” would be perceived just as negatively, notwithstanding the fact that the word “is rooted in social obligation and duty.”

What Conniff doesn’t understand is the concept of taxation has a negative connotation, not so much because of greed, but because too often people have seen public funds used for philosophically objectionable purposes (e.g. war, abortion) or wasteful ends (e.g. “bridges to nowhere”).

Nice try, Conniff, but you’re talking about nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.