I've just completed filing my taxes for 2007. I tend to dread my taxes the way I dread getting a shot; I cringe at the mere thought of it and then I'm surprised at how quickly it's all over and I think to myself "well, that wasn't so bad." But still, I am relieved that I don't have to think about it again for another 11 months.
You'd think the government would make it as easy as possible to file your taxes and give them your money, but instead it's a sadistic cat and mouse game where they chase your money and you try to hide it behind deductions. Some mice are more clever than others. Congress spends much of their time passing obscure laws within laws to make the game more interesting for everyone and more fair for no one.
I don't qualify for many deductions. This is because I am nearly an ideal citizen; I'm young, single, childless, healthy, employed, and renting. The government looks at an individual like me and thinks "well, what does she need money for?" And then they try to take as much of it as they can so they can give it to hipsters loving the lazy life on unemployment, urban teenagers who thought the pull-out method was an effective form of birth control, broke suburban homeowners, and the elderly so they can live to catch every episode of Wheel of Fortune between now and the day they turn 99 thanks to 50 different medications and dozens of surgeries.
I wish there were deductions that actually applied to me as a reward for not being in a high-risk category to require government assistance. Like an "I'm not a fat-ass whose diabetes care and blood pressure medications will drain Medicaid for decades" deduction. Or how about a "Doesn't breed copiously" deduction. Maybe even a "Lives within reasonable means" deduction.
But why reward responsibility? Why provide additional incentive to be self-sufficient and accountable? If we did that, there would not be nearly enough to go around to prop up the deadbeats and the lost causes. So surely, it's better to drain the Barely Successful to sustain the Clearly Failing.
At some point, it stopped being acceptable to ask whether some people have it coming to them, whether some deserve what they get, whether some people have earned the right to live with the consequences. Be it wealth or poverty, we want to assume that it just happens to people through no fault or merit of their own and that therefore, these are just states of being we can move around like game pieces.
There is no grace in economics; there is only cause and effect. Grace is what we give each other: our children, our parents, our friends. And even random strangers. But trying to inject our human subjectivities into mathematical realities only leaves us all more empty handed and less generous.