Isaiah the Prophet and the Tax Code

I have many faults, and only a few virtues. On hot steamy nights I roll and toss thinking of the things I’ve done that I’m ashamed of (some of which date to my elementary school days at PS 193 in Brooklyn). So, yes, I have my faults, but being a professional economist isn’t one of them. I say that to alert you to the fact that what follows is the product of thought experiments, not statistical analysis. (You know Mark Twain’s comment on statistics, of course: “There are three kinds of liars—Liars, damned liars and statistics.”)

The question: Which is more deleterious, income tax or sales tax? The answer is, obviously, sales tax. It’s regressive, with the poor paying the same amount as the rich; it discourages, or at least does not encourage purchases; and it’s annoying—always to my surprise the $10.00 item really costs $10.70 by the time I get to the cash register. It may add to the coffers of the state or city, and it may be used to discourage things society wants to discourage—cigarette smoking and gasoline guzzling, but on the whole it’s pretty indefensible. The income tax is no less annoying, but at least in theory, before the lobbyists get to add loopholes for the accountants and lawyers to exploit, people pay into government in accordance to what government does for them. Rich people need armies to protect them more than poor people; they need roads to transport their goods more than poor people who have few goods to ship.

So, here’s the thought experiment: What would happen if the solons who make up the state legislature voted to drop the sales tax (except on gasoline and cigarettes) and, to keep the state’s coffers from running out of cash, increased the income tax? Well, on the one hand there would be great hurrahing by the poor, of which we have many; on the other hand the wealthy would complain that the poor had their hands in other people’s pockets, as though Curt Schilling hadn’t already thought to do that.

If there were no sales tax, people would buy more, improving the state’s economy (this assumes that the capitalists who control the market don’t take advantage of the situation by raising their prices by 7%). People would shop in Rhode Island rather than in near-by Massachusetts and Connecticut. I have been known to take a day trip to New Hampshire because the state liquor store has no sales tax; no sales tax here might encourage people from the Nutmeg State to come here and buy a car. A week ago I went to Home Depot in Attleboro to price some materials. The place was practically empty, which struck me as odd. Then it hit me. Everybody was waiting for the tax-free weekend that would arrive in a few days. Clearly the tax-free weekend was doing nobody any good. People were not buying in advance of it (fewer profits to the store, fewer tax dollars to the Commonwealth which would not receive anything on the weekend. The problem is the temporary nature of the tax holiday. The solution would be to have no sales tax at all. More stores would open employing more people, providing more goods and services to the people. It’s simple; no sales tax means greater prosperity for Rhode Island.

And the income tax? If (as I do) you believe that taxes are a necessary evil to pay for the services we have come to depend on, such as schools and police and firefighters and the court system and (sadly they are needed) the jails, etc. increase the amount paid in income tax and eliminate the loopholes. The poorest among us won’t suffer, the richest can afford it. After all, the BMW they buy will only cost $60,000 not $64,200.

Where’s the Jewish content in this? The High Holidays approach. Each year we read:

This is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
...
It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,

Surely, one way to approach the ideal set forth by Isaiah, which Jews since time immemorial have read on Yom Kippur, would be to abolish the sales tax and increase the income tax. Amen, Selah.

A time to be born and a time to die

I recently attended the funeral of a woman I barely knew, though her husband has been an acquaintance for many years. He had recruited me to be on the Board of the Voice & Herald and though we often clash on policy, there’s obviously mutual respect and affection which our disagreements never diminish. For the past few months he’d absented himself from board meetings because his wife’s cancer had metastasized and he felt he had to devote all of his time to caring for her. She, knowing the using her allotted time to say goodbye to friends and relatives, tying up loose ends, of which there were very few, meticulous in life as she was. In mid-June I saw them at the airport, I on the way to my son’s wedding, they wishing bon voyage to their grandchildren who had come for a visit, and frankly I was surprised how well she looked. But six weeks later she was gone, with heavy heart I drove to her funeral.

Temple Beth El was packed with those of us who felt my friend’s loss, who came to bid their friend a final good-bye. Cantor Seplowin sang plaintively, rabbi Mack led us in reciting the 23rd psalm. A daughter spoke lovingly of her mother and rabbi Gutterman’s eulogy was on the mark. Rather than quoting a biblical text, he chose a poem I vaguely remembered from school but hadn’t thought of in years—Edna St Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” which concludes with these lines:

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

With that lament still ringing in my ears, feeling perhaps a little of the loss my friend must be suffering, I drove to another ceremony, this time a bris, but in one regard at least, not an ordinary bris. Every baby is a unique individual; every baby is potential energy already becoming kinetic. But this baby, this new life, this hope of the future was being attended to his extraordinary great-grandfather. As usual all the men in the room were a bit nervous, making corny jokes, trying not to look, trying not to feel the momentary pain inflicted on the child. None of this was unusual, but in averting my eye from the ritual event I saw, not for the first time, of course, the numbers tattooed onto the great-grandfather’s left forearm, the numbers he’d been branded with as a young man barely out of boyhood on his first day in Auschwitz, that Hell. He’d lost both parents and a sister and, for a while, his faith—but had survived and regained that faith and had become a rabbi. (You can read of his experiences in his memoir For Decades I was Silent) And now, 65 years after he was at the edge of the pit, at death’s door, he was attending to the covenant ceremony of his child’s child’s child. Of course the baby cried, of course others did as well, but when the tears were wiped away, when the father gave his son to his wife to hold, the three men and then the grandmother danced a joyous hora to the rhythmic clapping of the assembled guests and the singing of “simintov and mazal tov”.

The joy at the bris didn’t wipe away the feelings of regret I felt for the loss of my friend’s wife, but it did remind of hope. From the grave my friend’s wife would never return, but rescued from the grave’s edge the great-grandfather was now dancing. Neither family was aware of the other; I was the only connecting link; but life was going on; it was progressing despite the losses, despite the despair. God was in his heavens was welcoming a wonderful woman, recently come to His kingdom while down here a little baby was the center of our attentions as his mother lovingly held him while his male progenitors were dancing a hora as we clapped and sang in joy.

For centuries philosophers and theologians have, to no avail, tried to figure out the purpose of life, to make sense of the brief period we’re all allotted within the billions of years of the earth’s existence. Attending a funeral and a bris within an hour of each other puts things into perspective though, don’t you think?