Tax Lawyer's Blog

A few days ago Professor James Maule posed the following questions in a blog post titled Pay Taxes, Be Happy:

Why are some people content to make enough, or perhaps not quite enough, to meet their basic needs while devoting their lives to a career, occupation, or profession that fulfills them in other ways while others are so intent on “making a killing” that they never find happiness even as their after-tax incomes skyrocket.

Is it possible to be so addicted to money for its own sake that resistance to taxation, even when that taxation procures benefits, is unavoidably wired into the person’s psyche?

Mr. Maule’s post was a response to a blog posting by Paul Caron that referred to an OECD study that found that people in countries with higher tax rates are happier than Americans. 

Caron published the following excerpt from an article about the study written by Thomas Kostigen:

The OECD says people in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are the most content with their lives.

The three ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the OECD’s rankings of “life satisfaction,” or happiness.

Northern Europeans pay some of the highest taxes in the world.

Taxes in the U.S. have taken on a pejorative association because, well, we are never really quite sure of what we get in return for paying them, other than the world’s biggest military. Healthcare and other such social services aren’t built into our system. That means we have to worry more about paying for things ourselves. Worrying doesn’t equate to happiness.

There are other factors to consider. But better social services and less worry about having to pay for things such as medical bills, retirement and education do help with the happiness factor. Yet, we are so dead set against paying more taxes that it’s even spawning nationwide protests. Tea party, anyone? Maybe it’s time that we looked at taxes differently. We have to pay them anyway. So they might as well make us happy.

If Northern Europe is any benchmark, the more we’d pay the happier we just may be.

I admit I am rather easy to annoy, but this kind of nonsense really gets my goat.

Why is Mr. Kostigen assuming that the primary purpose in life is personal happiness?

The comment I left on Caron’s blog sums up my position:

If the purpose of life were contentment, we should all aspire to be my dog Bella.

She is the most content and unworried being on the planet. She wants for nothing and has no responsibilities other than to refrain from soiling the carpet.

In short, everything Bella needs is provided for by her “government”, moi.

But if the purpose of life is to realize your full potential as a creative, productive, loving human being, then the more you are governed (i.e. taxed) the less likely it is that you will fulfill that purpose.

I concede that the mass of men have no greater aspiration than to be their government’s pet, but I don’t think we should enact policies based on the neurotic dependency needs of the lumpen-proletariat.

And instead of comparing the happiness of Americans with the happiness of citizens of high-tax Nordic countries why not compare their objective accomplishments.

Like so:

Great American Inventions and Discoveries

The light bulb – Thomas Edison

The telephone – Alexander Graham Bell

The Polio vaccine – Jonas Salk

The airplane - The Wright Brothers

Moving assembly line – Henry Ford

Air conditioning – Willis Carrier

The steamboat – Robert Fulton

The cotton gin – Eli Whitney

The mechanical reaper – Cyrus McCormick

Vulcanized rubber – Charles Goodyear

Great Nordic Inventions and Discoveries

The sauna

The secret foreign bank account

Some Questions

Here’s my question for Mr. Kostigen:

Do you admit the possibility that part of the reason American taxpayers have created more life-altering inventions and made more evolution-enhancing discoveries than the rest of the world combined is because they are empowered to do so by a system that forces them to rely on their own merits?

And here’s one for Professor Maule:

Why do you assume that a person having a self-interested life goal of maximing wealth is any less noble than a person having a self-interested life goal of creating a transcendent symphony?

Why can’t “making a killing”  be my art and composing a symphony be yours?

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