if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Communism and Environmentalism
by Lee
By now you all know that in China you have to prepay your bills. I tell you, this has made me vastly more conscious of my electricity use. I’m one of these types who walks around the house with all the lights on and leaves them on. I never really gave much thought to it, it was just a bad habit. But now, faced with a situation where the lights could literally blink off if my prepay runs out, I’m always making sure that I turn off lights when I leave a room, that all the lights and electric heaters are off when I leave, and so on. I’ve even set the external hard drives on my computer to spin down after an hour of non-use.
Who the hell woulda thought that going Red would make me go green?
In a weird way, it’s like the idea that Newt and the gang had back with in the Contract With America days, where they would restructure the tax system so that you paid your income taxes every month like a bill, rather than in a lump sum at the end of the year. The idea was that if you were forced to write a bill every month you would be more aware and conscious of just how much money you were paying to the government. It was a brilliant, common-sense idea, which of course doomed it to the ash heap of history. But this little pre-pay experience shows that I think it could have worked wonders if implemented. It really does make you think more about your money.
(Crossposted to LeeInChina.com)
Comments
We can’t control the amount of taxes we pay.
Ah, but you can. Consume less, drive less, make less, take advantage of whatever retirement program your work affords, and most important, do NOT vote for a Democrat next November.
Lee, I think you’ve missed a major difference in your analogy. YOU can control the amount of electricity and water you use. We can’t control the amount of taxes we pay.
Well, I can’t control the amount the government charges for electricity, either. The point was not to draw a direct analogy between the two systems, only to show that being forced to confront the cost of something on a regular basis really puts into perspective how much of it you use. In my case it’s electricity—I’m using far less than I did in LA, even though it’s cheaper here. In the case of taxes, being forced to pay them like a bill every month would make people conscious of what government costs and what their share of the tax burden is, the idea being that this would then encourage them to push for reforms in government to reduce their tax burden.
I walk into a room and I think, “Do I need this light on? It’s just going to cost me money.” The Newt system would have people saying, “Do we really need this much government? Look how much money it’s costing me.”
Not an identical analogy, I think you can see the point.
I second you on that Lee.
I wonder if you can pre-pay at the massgae joints so you can just walk in when the urge strikes without thinking about it.
I’m in the same boat here in Samoa. To have electricity, I have to goto the office that sells it, prepay and enter a number into a box outside my house. If I run out at night, I can either wait until the office in town opens or pay a lot to take a taxi to the all night office. This does raise awareness of how much energy one uses.
Let me tell you, it’s hard being a Peace Corps volunteer.
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Lee, I think you’ve missed a major difference in your analogy. YOU can control the amount of electricity and water you use. We can’t control the amount of taxes we pay.
And, we do pay on a weekly, biweekly or whatever pay cycle you’re on with Fed Withholding. The lump sum is just the extra we have to pay. Honestly, if I had to look at it every month having little or no control, I’d just be depressed at how little we get in return for what we pay.