Some years ago I called Phil Shrag whom I knew from law school. He’d run the National Organization for the Rights of the Indigent for the NAACP and worked for the New York City Commissioner of Consumer Affairs. Phil was and is a very public spirited person. At the time he was teaching at Columbia. I don’t remember what I called him about but at some point in the conversation we made small talk. I asked him what he was teaching. Tax. That was a surprising answer since none of the things Phil had done suggested significant involvement with the tax code. But he pointed out that every public policy runs through the tax code. So it made a lot of sense.
Phil of course was right. Global warming? The tax code determines how cheap it is to buy carbon based fuels that warm the globe. And it determines whether the producers or somebody else has to pay for the cleanups, the environmental damage, dealing with the warming planet. And it determines what the carbon hawkers have to pay for threatening to obliterate our descendants and end human life on this planet. No tax – go ahead and choke the globe.
Antibiotic resistant disease? The tax code determines what cheap methods are OK to raise and sell animals and animal products. Jam animals together for “efficient” processing and they need antibiotics. The tax is on the land, not the antibiotics. Voila, it’s cheap to feed antibiotics to animals and ship them to us with resistant diseases. Of course we’ll pay the price with illness, doctors, and grieving for our dear ones – but, hey, the milk was cheap.
Landfills? Who pays for those? Do you get a break for composting, sorting, recycling or not buying so much? Nope – we all pay for garbage. But the tax could be shifted to producers and off our shoulders. Things would instantly get less wasteful.
Ever since the elder George said “Read my lips; no new taxes,” taxes have become the third rail of politics – instant suicide for any politician even to bring it up. But health, wealth and survival are right there in the tax code. We need smart taxes, that shape us the way we ought to be. The freedom to corrupt our country and our world with garbage, poison and heat isn’t legitimate freedom – that’s one person’s “freedom” to mess with another’s life, or the lives of many. That’s not freedom, not what our forefathers’ fought for, not patriotic, sensible or constructive. We need smart taxes. Now. Taxes that will make our world a better place.
So last week I wished for peace, health and good government – figuring I was on mostly safe ground. So now I’m blowing it – wishing for new, I’d rather say better, taxes. TAXES for the New Year! That Gottlieb character must be crazy. Like a fox? Naahhh. Just nuts. Republicans won’t allow it anyway.
Oh, devilishly inspired by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, how about a tax on more than two children per family – no, don’t throw tomatoes, they stain. I’m out o’ here! Happy New Year everyone.
Steve Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and author of Morality Imposed: The Rehnquist Court and Liberty in America. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran.
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