What a ride it was! Approaching my 87th birthday, I reflect with amazement on the incredible stroke of luck that delivered to me a measurably rewarding life in a great country. I constantly marvel at the courage of my mother and father who left the little hamlet of Bukowsko, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in Poland, just before World War I, for the promise of a better life in America. Had they not made that move, my father, a Polish cavalryman in the Austrian army, likely would not have survived the war. Or had he survived, and had I come into the world in Poland, I might have ended as two cousins did in Auschwitz, one of whom who carried my given name. Or, following in my father’s footsteps, I might have ended buried in a trench in the Katyn Forest.
It was not an easy life, as my formative years were in the Great Depression. I know the ammonia stench and sweat that attends the shoveling of chicken shit from a pit beneath the hen house, cow manure from beneath the barn, and yes, I even know about cleaning out an outhouse. I know the misery and danger of logging at age thirteen, and unloading freight car loads of ice-covered hardwood lumber during my high school years, sometimes far into the night so we didn’t get stuck with a demurrage charge for an additional day’s layover. I know the total exhaustion after a night of it. So tired I had to stop every few hundred feet on the walk home, to rest ( I am reminded that the much admired Newt Gingrich claims that poor people have no work ethic).
But I did find my way into college, and I am aware now that the cost of that education was not fully borne by me, considering that tuition and room were only $75 for a semester, and meals came from a pittance paid for scrubbing lab benches every day. Someone paid taxes to keep that State University running.
Upon graduating I landed my first job with Bell Aircraft Corporation in Niagara Falls, New York. There I fell into a career that centered on the design of rocket engines, propulsion systems for rockets and guided missiles. In Buffalo I met a concert pianist who finally decided after relentless persuasion on my part that I might make a worthy spouse. That union introduced me into a world of musicians and artists that vastly broadened my sphere of interest. We enjoyed our mixed acquaintances for nearly six decades. From my happy experience I have always advised musicians to marry engineers, and vice versa.
Shortly, we moved to San Diego, California, where an opportunity had opened up to work on the design and development of the propulsion system for the Atlas ICBM. I had no particular aversion to working on weapons systems, so long as there was an enemy doing the same thing. But aside from the excitement of working on futuristic technology, and personally satisfying assignments such as propulsion engineer on John Glenn’s orbital flight, I was witness to a remarkable transformation of a backwater city into one of the nation’s most livable and productive areas. This occurred largely as a direct result of spending tax dollars - in this instance a redistribution of wealth that allotted tax dollars for weapons systems manufacture. In those days the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was 90%. Tax dollars went in many directions that could not possibly have been achieved through private effort. Notable among infrastructure achievements was the Interstate Highway System under President Eisenhower. Among scientific endeavors - the Apollo program, initiated by President Kennedy, and of course the Internet, which offers everyone unprecedented access to knowledge.
What occurred in San Diego was an influx of a large number of skilled technical personnel, engineers and scientists, mostly young and starting up families, to work on the Atlas ICBM program. There was an immediate need for housing, and the various service institutions that are vital to support a growing society - shopping centers, hospitals, schools, etc. The transformation of San Diego was begun, funded by both investment capital and taxes. The latter provided basic infrastructure - water supply, sewers, schools, and a superb highway system crisscrossing the city and outlying areas so most destinations are just minutes away, free of traffic stops.
As the Atlas ICBM program tapered off, there was no stopping the development of the community. The skilled personnel were settled in and not about to move away. The Atlas missile remained an anchor industry for many years as the rocket morphed into a handy vehicle for launching all manner of spacecraft into space, laying the foundation for the vast communications system now in place, sending the first spacecraft to the moon, Mars and other planetary missions, and of course the first manned orbital flights. The space program would be non-existent had it not been seeded for commercial exploitation and for scientific exploration supported directly by tax dollars. But other enterprises sprung up. Some were offshoots from the missile industry. For example, the familiar lubricant WD-40 was originally developed for coating Atlas tanks to prevent corrosion. Graphite composite tennis racquets and golf clubs originated with Atlas workers who left to develop new products.
The availability of a skilled work force was an obvious draw for other enterprises to take shape in San Diego and the surrounding regions. The original aerospace core business spread out into many other directions, so the city is now a major research, engineering, and production center in medical, electronic, energy, military, and Earth science fields, among others.
Now, in this area of ample sunshine, anyone the least bit visionary can see the time when this region will be the first in the nation to get all its energy from solar, wind and geothermal sources. But without tax dollars to kick off the many facets of the green industry, it would likely never take place.
Keeping taxes low for the wealthy because “they are the job creators” has a hollow ring to it. An interesting statistic would be how many jobs the two hundred plus millionaire legislators in Congress have created since receiving a tax cut for the past eleven years. We hear no boasting, because the premise is false.
Admittedly there are problems with misspending, unwarranted subsidies and outright fraud, but those are curable. A first step would be adoption of public funding for campaigns of public officials. That would effectively defang the hold that corporations and special interests have over legislators. Lobbyists could no longer do anything more than offer information. There would be no quid pro, tacit or overt, other than perhaps a job as a lobbyist, as a consequence reduced to a dry occupation.
So, Grover Norquist, go home, shut yourself in, enjoy time in your fabled bathtub, and spend your days counting your money. The solution is not to take an ax to the system. With your bleak, unfulfilling philosophy you don’t come across as someone with deep and caring insight regarding the future of the nation. How you managed to cow our legislators into fidelity to you instead of their constituents will be a subject for study for some time. I have a feeling that deep down, the wealthy among us sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with what you are pedaling. Really, did anyone among the wealthy suffer when the tax rates peaked at 90%?
Historically, has there ever been a era when a concentration of wealth and power proved beneficial to the general population? Quite the contrary has been the case.
So here I sit in a semi-paradise, a beneficiary of tax money wisely spent, both as seed money and as total funding, for example the great University of California just a short walk away, and magnificent medical facilities minutes away, where the vagaries of old age are attended to thanks to Medicare - a service which should be available to everyone. A touch of the keyboard and I have access to a world of knowledge as well as facts and ideas I can use to buttress my own writings. For these and other benefits, I am acutely aware and appreciative of what tax dollars can do, and need to do, for the common good.
I don’t mind paying taxes. Not at all.
