Dreaded season also a time to appreciate what taxes buy us

It’s tax season again. Because taxes are such a dreaded event, we associate our government with one of the more miserable things we are forced to do over the course of the year. If you live in New York City, you see that, not only do you pay for Social Security and Medicare services that you increasingly hear you may never benefit from yourself when you get to be 65–but you also pay the second highest in state taxes and a hefty city tax.

It is a lot easier to comprehend the impact this has on your already too meager paycheck, much of which is allotted to pay rent in what is probably the most expensive city to live in of the whole country.

Harder to comprehend is the level of service you get as a New Yorker and the money it takes to keep it up. Thousands of garbage cans across the city are consistently emptied, sewers are maintained, trains are run at all hours of the day and night, water is treated, restaurants that you eat at are inspected for sanitation, public campaigns are waged to remind people to get flu shots and not drink too much soda.

We can be quick to focus on the times when these services fail us–when trains are delayed, when the post office line moves slowly, or when we hear about some restaurant inspector getting paid off. It is tempting to throw the baby out with the bath water at that point, to dismiss the entire government because of such instances. But most of the time, things work, and they work pretty well, considering we live in such a large city that basically requires, if our days are to run normally, that things run well and on time.

A world in which we will not or cannot pay for such services is a scary one. It will look a lot worse than a postal line that is not moving fast enough. It will look like untreated water, unemptied garbage and non-running trains. We are already seeing it in some parts of our country, like California’s Inland Empire.

So, as I bristle when I look at my W-2, I at least have to admit that I benefit from how those tax dollars are spent, as well. Sure, I could live in a part of the country where I am taxed less, but I would live a totally different life–one where I drive to a strip mall for dinner because my municipality does not care to pay for bus services, one where I do not see my neighbors, because my town does not care to build and maintain a park, one, where my entertainment is my plasma screen digital TV.

But I happen to think that, if a citizenry has a good government, they are better off when they are more highly taxed. A good government is not easy to maintain, and it needs agencies that audit other agencies in order to prevent graft and corruption. But such things can be done and have been done as long as people are willing to pony up, particularly those who benefit the most from this system. Currently, it does not seem to be the case.