Every day is a shite storm in Muncie, it seems.

Yesterday’s StarPress featured an article on the City Council’s plans to introduce new LOIT taxes, in an effort to bridge our City’s funding gaps.

You can imagine the reaction.

Like everyone else, I don’t enjoy paying taxes; any more than I enjoy paying for utilities, gasoline, medical bills or anything else. Like those other things, though, I recognize both the necessity and the benefit of paying for them.

I meet people every day that say to me “government produces nothing,” or make comparisons between taxes and “reaching into your neighbor’s pocket;” and quite honestly, it frustrates me. I understand that there is an anger and anxiety that drive such sentiments, as well as a sense that our tax dollars are being wasted at every turn; and to some extent, there is validity to those feelings.

But there is also an irrationality behind them. To say that government produces nothing suggests that roads, schools, public safety, rule of law, etc. would just magically materialize on their own. To compare paying for public services to robbing your neighbor suggests that we don’t have an obligation to support public services; but rather that they are an entitlement of sorts. And while no one can argue that there isn’t fraud, waste and abuse when it comes to local government’s stewardship of tax dollars, the picture that is painted is at best a caricature – the waste comprises a small portion of the overall budget, not a majority.

The other comment I hear oft-repeated has to do with local government “living within their means,” and “living on a budget, like the rest of us have to.” The fundamental problem I have with those attitudes is that the two represent very different dynamics. Managing your personal finances revolves around making decisions that best benefit you, personally – it is a “me” proposition. Government operations, on the contrary, are about providing collective services and managing the things individual citizens can’t manage themselves – which is more of a “we” proposition.

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