Tuesday, August 26, 2008

High taxes or appropriate taxes?

Republicans make a big thing of charging Democrats with creating high taxes, and to many Republicans, this also means no taxes are preferred.

Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to run a successful business in a society without taxes. A taxless society has too many uncertainties. Uncertainties can be reduced with a civil society that sets and enforces rules. The price of a civil society is taxes. How much tax are we prepared to pay for what kind of civil society.

The question really should be do we have appropriate taxes for the society we want. If businesses needs skilled workers they will pay for them either with their own training programs, which cost money or with taxes for publicly supported schools. Otherwise, they will hope enough potential workers will pay for their own education.