On a second hand existence

No one has responded yet to my post on politics, so I think it is time to reformulate my question.

I was reading in Christianity Today, an article about one Wendell Berry. His big thing is that in our modern existence much of what we do is done through what he Calls proxies, and that we often fail to recognize them for what they are. For example, we use a lot of energy to fuel our lives. But we don't have anything to do with the production of that energy. We pay someone else to go out an strip mine coal so that we can run our computers, and write about things like using other people to strip mine coal to power our computers.

Berry asks that we begin to think about what is being done in our name. It is to be sure a daunting moral excersize, but, he contends, is better than continuing to ignore what we implicitly sanction. His major themes are energy and agriculture. While I think it implausible that everyone live as he does on a 140 acre farm, growing his own food, and chopping wood to heat his home, I do think that it is a worthy undertaking to see if there are ways to reduce our reliance on proxies as much as possible.

I would also like to extend the discussion to the realm of politics. Our proxies in energy may harm the earth, but our proxies in politics do something far worse. They point a gun at other people and say give me your hard-earned money so I can give it to that guy.

There is a funny line in the movie Stranger than Fiction where the female lead is explaining to Will Ferrell why she didn't pay all of her taxes. She says, 70% of my taxes go to support these programs that I support, but the other 30% go to support the war in Iraq that I don't agree with so those are the ones I didn't pay.

So on that not I will propose a new tax system: First set the basic rate slightly lower, say 25% for anyone making more than 50000 and 10% for everyone that makes less than that, even minimum wage earners so that everyone has a stake in what the government does, unlike the current system, where a substantial portion of the population gets a completely free ride. While we're at it, since the rate is lower, we can elimitate all deductions and breaks, and computerize the whole system to save time and money. Second, set aside a percentage of taxes for a few basic programs: Defence State and Treasury. Then hae a new form to submit with tax returns that would allow the taxpayers to decide where their money would be spent. You ould reasonably condense everything the government does into 200 lines or so. You know, like, How much would you like to put towards paying farmers not to grow crops so that you can pay more for food? Third, many people I have talked to say something along the lines of, I'm happy to pay taxes, because I think the programs the fund are important. So let them. Have a voluntary contribution line at the end of the tax form. Then we can see if they put their money where their mouth is.

Wow, this is fun: While we're in fantasy land lets just ax every entitlement program. It's not like they work anyway.