Representation Without Taxation

 

One of the issues over which we Americans fought our Revolutionary War was "taxation without representation".  We were being taxed by the Crown (King George III) and denied the ability to choose our own representatives in Parliament.  There were other issues, of course, but that was one of the biggies that could get those unruly colonists to rise up in revolt.

Our Constitution is written to, among other things, guarantee that every taxed American is represented — mostly.  The Territory of Puerto Rico, for example, has no representative in Congress, and therefore Puerto Ricans do not have to pay income taxes to the federal government.  They have their own local government and pay local taxes to support that.  The same is generally true of Guam and other territories:  if you can't vote for a Congressional representative, you don't get taxed.  (This is not 100% true 100% of the time, but it's 'close enough for government work'.)

There is, however, another side to that coin.  Some people pay no taxes but still get to vote.  They have 'representation without taxation'.  It may turn out that your income is so small and your tax credits and authorized deductions are large enough that your 'taxable income' is zero and your tax is also zero.  People in this situation are incentivized to vote a certain way because the result of their vote will cost them nothing — there's no penalty for voting this way as opposed to that way.

This may explain why our country is in the condition it's in.  When the number of tax filers who actually pay no tax crosses a certain threshold, the controls that would normally act to correct fiscal irresponsibility disappear.  If you know you won't be taxed for that new road, there's no reason for you to vote against it, is there?

The same sort of analysis applies to those who receive stipends from the government.  'Social Security' is a fine example.  For people who are retired and whose income consists of pensions and social security payments, it is very likely that the 'tax due' line on one's 1040 will be smaller than the total received from taxes paid by others, even if that number is not zero.  That is, there are two categories of 'tax filers': those who pay taxes, and those who consume taxes.

Without the ability to put the brakes on out-of-control spending, bankruptcy looms.  It's inevitable.  It may be that our next revolution will be fueled by the issue of 'representation without taxation'.  At some point in the future, one's W-2s and 1099s that report the core of one's income may show income in two categories: income derived from taxes, and income not derived from taxes.  It will make for an interesting new world when, as must eventually happen, the franchise is restricted to those whose tax contribution exceeds their tax consumption.

Under such a system, Congressmen will vote, but only when they're at work.  They can all stay home on Election Day because their salary is all derived (it damned well better be) from taxes; they are 'tax consumers'.  Policemen and firemen will not vote, along with FBI agents and (uh-oh...) soldiers, although volunteer firemen will vote because they actually have income producing jobs beyond volunteering.  Public school teachers won't vote, but private school teachers will.  The kid who delivers sandwiches from Quizno's will get to vote, but the clerk at DMV who issued his driver's license won't.  It's very likely that SS recipients will no longer vote unless the income from their 401Ks is so large that the tax on the proceeds exceeds their SS checks — in which case they probably don't care, either.

But as long as our electoral system allows people to vote who do not actually 'pay the bill', we will see the wrong kind of politicians elected over and over and over.  It's a recipe for disaster that is just now becoming clear.

 

Around The World In 79 Days

 

Norene and I are toying with the idea of a trans-Pacific cruise next year, Seattle to Australia/New Zealand.  If we go, we will cross both the Equator and the International Date Line and this got me to thinking — always a dangerous situation.

In Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, the plot twist hinges on the fact that Phileas Fogg travels eastward from London.  As a result, each day's sunset is a little earlier than yesterday's.  In the days before time zones, local time was established by local noon, and it was customary for travelers to set their timepieces to that local standard.  When in Rome...

Because each of Fogg's 'days' was shorter than the canonical 24-hours, he actually arrives back in London a full day ahead of his deadline — but doesn't realize it because he has seen 80 sunsets (in 79 days), although, realistically, when he got to San Francisco, he must certainly have wondered why Thursday's newspaper was being published on Friday...

(Aside: the phenomenon is said to have been discovered by the 17th-century Norwegian explorer, Andersrag, who named it after himself: the Alex Andersrag Time Band...)

In the modern world, we accept that crossing the International Date Line west-to-east involves crossing into yesterday, and crossing east-to-west into tomorrow.  Why should this be so?  Let's perform a little thought-experiment:

We start with two observers in London at 8am on a Tuesday, both with clocks set to GMT and we send both on a high-speed trip (able to cross vast distances in the wink of an eye), one westward to American Samoa, and the other eastward to Tonga.  They are instructed to change their clocks backward or forward as appropriate for the time zone they're currently in.  The one traveling eastward to Tonga will constantly set the clock forward from 8am to 9am to 10am until arriving at Tonga 12 time zones later at 8pm Tuesday.  The other travels west to American Samoa inching his clock backward to 7am and 6am until arriving in American Samoa 11 time zones earlier at 9pm Monday.  At this point, the two observers are a (reasonably) short flight from each other and their clocks say different days.  One of them must be wrong, right?  No, they're both right.

They're both right because neither has crossed the date line.  If the observer in American Samoa travels to meet his partner at Tonga, he will be forced (by convention) to adjust his clock from 'Monday' to 'Tuesday'.  If the observer at Tonga travels to American Samoa, he will be forced to adjust his clock from 'Tuesday' to 'Monday'.  This is what Phileas Fogg didn't realize: at some point during the trip, convention says he stepped across the line from Tuesday into Monday.  Of course, we all know how that worked out: he realizes his error just in time to complete the trip according to the wager he made 80 days prior.

(If we go on that cruise, we will 'lose' a day just after leaving American Samoa — then gain it back and lose it again as the ship weaves back and forth across the line — and not get it back until we return to the U.S. at the end of the cruise.)