L.A. Liberty

Zadie Smith: “It has never been hard for me to pay my taxes.”

motherjones:

Appropriate today, from “The North West London Blues”:

Some people owe everything they have to the bank accounts of their parents. I owe the state. Put simply, the state educated me, fixed my leg when it was broken, and gave me a grant that enabled me to go to university. It fixed my teeth (a bit) and found housing for my veteran father in his dotage. When my youngest brother was run over by a truck it saved his life and in particular his crushed right hand, a procedure that took half a year, and which would, on the open market—so a doctor told me at the time—have cost a million pounds. Those were the big things, but there were also plenty of little ones: my subsidized sports centre and my doctor’s office, my school music lessons paid for with pennies, my university fees. My NHS glasses aged 9. My NHS baby aged 33. And my local library. To steal another writer’s title: England made me. It has never been hard for me to pay my taxes because I understand it to be the repaying of a large, in fact, an almost incalculable, debt.

Chuckling at the use of a British national to talk about American culture.

Slaves, be thankful of your masters.

Worry not their efficiency or if better alternatives could exist. Ignore the unintended consequences of a legitimized monopoly on aggressive force. The ends justify the means, even if the achieved ends fall grossly short of the promised ends. Simply genuflect and give thanks. Find joy in your subservience.

And all you have to give in return is whatever they demand.

Posted September 21, 2012 at 2:36pm in ∆ riposte motherjones taxes | comments || home