Thursday, August 12, 2010

Bathroom Monologue: No Taxation

At age 11, John proposed a tax plan where you only paid for what services you wanted...

For a while they institutionalized a “get what you pay for” system. It was supreme democracy. On your taxes everything was itemized. Don’t want to support deadbeats? You don’t pay for welfare. Who wants to build schools in Afghanistan? Cut that.

There was a surprising number of people who thought they could get by without police. Naturally you had minorities who were historically abused by them anyway, but there were many middle class and upscale people who didn’t check the box. There wasn’t going to be a sign on your lawn that you didn’t get 9-1-1 service, so nobody would know your house was vulnerable to robbery. The appearance of protection should have remained the same.

Hacktivists made a list. The same kind of people who, in the name of privacy issues, published whenever somebody said they were leaving home via Facebook or Twitter, got ahold of tax lists. There was an app to modify Google Maps (called “CopMap”) so that you could see all the unpoliced homes colored in ironic blue.

Robberies went up. They also went down. Statisticians still debate over the charts. Homes were more likely to be targeted for vandalism within 72 hours of a CopMap posting in most major east and west coast cities. Decreases in crime stats were pegged to all the people who realized nobody would come if they called for help; why report it when no one cared? And the complexity of the debate over drops in police misbehavior and brutality reports remains staggering.

It was worse for the people who paid. They expected all the same services. In fact, they expected better than the same, because a) they’d elected to pay, and b) people always over-expect from the government. But police departments tanked. They couldn’t fix vehicles or afford overtime. They couldn’t afford half-staff and there were major layoffs. Police Unions went on strike, but against who? Federal, state and city governments did not have the money they wanted.

Applications for security guards and security-related jobs shot up by 1,100% in the first year.

The people who paid actually didn’t get what they paid for, because they didn’t have enough money to support the system. Most systems had already malfunctioned on their meager fully-taxed budgets. On fraction-taxed budgets?

Gun sales went up, for personal and home defense. The profligation of firearms was not the deterrent the NRA wanted it to be. While there weren’t many police to take reports, people who arrived at ERs for “self-inflicted” or “accidental” gun wounds skyrocketed. They were furious to learn that funding for ERs had been consolidated under one of the boxes they hadn’t checked, and that most hospitals were no longer honoring uninsured emergency walk-ins.

The ER fiasco got a lot of attention. So did the collapse of the single-payer insurance system, which we’d only established recently. Only the military maintained operations, built on years of doing outrageous things with outrageously less money than you thought they were getting. So many things went awry that the police became a secondary issue, because they were who you called when something else broke.

The Weisman/Gladhart ticket rode to the presidency on the first-ever successful campaign of tax increases. They proposed them as small and strategic. They promised parts of tax forms would still be itemized. They lied. They had to.

26 comments:

  1. This sounds to me like an excellent starting point for an apocalyptical sci-fi novel. Too bad only liberals like myself would read it...

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  2. Wait - liberals? Did I just call myself a liberal? That doesn't sound quite right either. Norwegians would read it. I would.

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  3. Time is ripe for a re-write of 1984 in the modern context.

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  4. Let's not mention the toilets of those who forget to check the sewer system box..now that would back some ..well you know..up into the living room..not pretty. A ponderous write indeed.

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  5. This is a scarier horror story than any vampire or zombie story. Because I could see this happening in the not too distant future.

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  6. These are actually really interesting thoughts, John. This is what I love about your writing. You take something everyone always yaks about and you carry it out all the way to the end. Thinking about it, isn't that what the definition of wisdom is? Looking for the end result of a descion or action?

    Always, always enjoy reading you, bud. Missed ya.

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  7. I'm from a small town in a state without sales tax but each city and/or county could have sales taxes. People, especially tourists, always complained about the taxes and I told them the sales taxes paid for our police department, hospital, schools and fire department. If they didn't like it then they could go somewhere without those services. :)

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  8. This is scary because it seems like it could happen and boy I hope it doesn't. Well done as always. I agree with what others have said, this does read like the beginning of something bigger.

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  9. Loved the "ironic blue" line! And people not getting what they paid for? Been there.

    Agree with Jodi about how you take the thoughts of the day and stretch them out in a masterful, creative way in your stories.

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  10. Very clever, kind of what's happened in South Africa with all the private security there.

    Not quite sure why the military budget holds up, unless people want soldiers to step into the security breach at home? Surely the first thing people would vote by withholding taxes is on foreign wars?

    Good stuff

    Marc Nash

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  11. I'm with Eric. It's completely scary because it could be real one not-too-distant day.

    You have a knack for these believable twist on civilization stories, John.

    Yikes. Great story.

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  12. I think this may have been the scariest thing I read all day.

    I like what Jodi said, because that's exactly what you do. All those odd little thoughts that run through ones head seem to get trapped in your filter and come out all polished.

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  13. Some really interesting ideas, love the fact that your writing is thought provoking yet never less than 100% entertaining....

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  14. Yeah buddy, this is lip-smackin' good stuff. It's the set-em-up premise, take a simple idea and extend it to it's logical (and ridiculous) conclusions that make work by Vonnegut and Heinlein and many other SF masters to totally engaging. It's the kind of work I was raised on. Thanks for giving us a perfectly drafted micro version, John.

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  15. As a social liberal living in a very red county, bravo. Loved this one.

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  16. Nicely done, John. We Americans want it all don't we? We want the best services for the least money and it just doesn't work like that.

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  17. Very dystopian feel to this piece. Love it.

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  18. I genuinely love the way you write. It's all the more 'horrific' because it's entirely plausible. And I love the idea of CopMap - really buys into the fears people had that StreetView would let robbers know when their houses were empty!

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  19. So true. Nobody wants to pay taxes, but we all want our services.

    "Don't tax you. Don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree." - Russell B. Long
    ~jon

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  20. Truth can be so much scarier than fiction. Going to be pondering this one for a while to come.
    Adam B @revhappiness

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  21. Am I the only one who sees the irony in the fact that "John" proposed this? :)

    Really good, too scary stuff John.

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  22. Jeez man. Your future freaks me out for reals! O.o

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  23. Very scary! Stories about what could happen in the near future are some of the most chilling, especially when so convincingly written. Well done.

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  24. A modest proposal. I do so love good satire.

    Excellent job with this one. And I loved the ending - "They lied. They had to."

    Really well done.

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