A Repeal of the Income Tax = A Decline in Education

Benjamin Franklin, a revered founding father, said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” In November 2008 no group is trying to put on the ballot a referendum to repeal death. However, a group is trying to put on the ballot a referendum to repeal the income tax.
Why did Benjamin Franklin believe that taxes are a certainty? The answer is simple. It is a certain proposition that no government can exist without the ability to tax. Government is preferable to anarchy.
Adoption of the federal constitution by the thirteen states guaranteed that all levels of government would tax the population not only to exist but to provide services which the people wanted. What remained to be resolved were the extent of those services and the type and amount of taxation.
In America this issue is perpetual because the ebb and flow of popular opinion requires the government to adjust constantly the levels of taxation and public services.
In the first half of the ninetee nth century Horace Mann, the father of American education, aspired to create public schools available to all in Massachusetts. Subsequently, in fits and starts, Massachusetts led the nation in providing g public education to all. Although we in the twenty-first century have much more to do, Massachusetts can be proud. Our students are the highest achieving in the USA.
To maintain its intellectual and economic vitality our state will continue to depend on very well educated men and women.
Charitable donations and corporate gifts, though admirable most of the time, are not the main financial support of public schools. Taxes are.
Prior to the Civil War Boston established a public library, one open to all. Many consider it to be the first public library in the country. It is certainly one of the most eminent. Now a public library exists in practically every city and town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Public libraries are inseparable from public education because up on their founding the prevailing view was that public libraries provided even more education for everyone in the community.
Charitable donations and corporate gifts, though admirable most of the time, are not the main financial support of public libraries. Taxes are.
Many generations ago leaders in the civic life of Massachusetts, seeking to improve the state’s quality of life then and wishing to expand it in the future, decided that public schools and public libraries were essential ingredients. Simply put, an educated populace means a better community.
Imagine what repeal of the income tax will do. It will remove approximately thirteen (13) billion dollars from the state budget. The decline in local aid form the state to cities and towns will be astronomical, leading to a huge decline in the amount of money available to public schools and libraries.
Fewer courses, higher class sizes, fewer teachers, paraprofessionals, and everyone else in the schools, less security, fewer extra curricular activities, fewer librarians, fewer books in the libraries, more crumbling schools, more disadvantaged children, more ignorance, more lack of opportunity, less civilization.
Repeal of the income tax will insure that students educated in the public schools of Massachusetts will not be the best in the nation, nor the second best, nor the third best. Who knows what best they will be.
The proponents of the repeal have leapt over the first hurdle by obtaining the required number of signatures. The repeal must then go to the legislature. If the legislature does not enact it into law (it won’t), then the proponents must leap over a second hurdle by obtaining approximately 11,000 more signatures to get on the ballot. We shall try to prevent them from doing so, but the hurdle is not high.
Then we shall organize, organize more, and organize even more to educate the voters of Massachusetts about the connection between the income tax and civilization.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a native of our state who demonstrated his extraordinary talents on the battlefields of the Civil War and on the US Supreme Court, said, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.”