Taxes, Community and Freedom

On January 23, the Post-Crescent told us that Governor Walker is has proposed yet more income and property tax cuts. The new tax cuts are estimated to cost about $504 million on top of the $750 million tax cuts passed last year.

Of course, we all like tax cuts. No one enjoys paying taxes, and everyone likes having a little more money to spend. However, we have to balance our individual desires with the welfare of our communities.  Most of us in Wisconsin believe strongly in the importance of community, and we are proud of the communities we live in.  We boast that the Fox Cities are good places to raise children. We enjoy living in safe and attractive places. We know and like our neighbors. We are proud of our strong, community institutions. 

We all know that in order to have strong communities, we to have pitch in and work together, but pitching in cannot be abstract or theoretical. We have to put some real skin in the game.  We have to commit ourselves to maintaining the institutions of the communities that we love.  If we want good public schools or public parks, we have to agree to pay for them. If we want a safe community, we have to pay for police and fire departments. If we want parks for recreation, we have to pay for them.

In addition, our schools provide the underpinnings for our freedom to get ahead in our free enterprise economy.  Economic freedom is one of the things that our country is famous for, and many of our ancestors came here to take advantage of it. Today, our high schools, colleges and technical training institutions give our children the tools they need to take advantage of the freedom that our economy offers. Without those tools, “economic freedom” would be an empty slogan for them.  So, if we want freedom to be more than a slogan, we have to support our schools.

The same thing is true for political freedom. A citizen’s freedom depends on his or her ability to understand the issues that affect his/her life and to use that understanding to guide his/her vote. Our schools provide the students with the information they need to begin to understand the issues that affect them.  Thus, strong schools provide the basis for political and economic freedom, and strong schools are part of a strong community.

So, we have to balance the pleasure of having a little more money to spend individually with the equally strong pleasure of having a community that we are proud of and that provides a basis for maintaining our freedom.  I do not know what the long-term effect of Gov. Walker’s proposed tax-cut will be, but I do know that if we continue to drain money from our public institutions, we will not be able to maintain them, and we will lose the communities we love and the freedom that they support.