Taxes are BAD. Never mind that they pay for a civilized society. Never mind that without them life as we know and like would not exist. Taxes are BAD, instruments of the Devil, unAmerican, and are always proposed by Liberals and opposed by Conservatives. Just what they’re trying to conserve is beyond the scope of this blog.
User fees are GOOD. User fees are in the great spirit of Capitalism, the system loved by Conservatives and loathed by Liberals who would take away our freedoms by taxing us. User fees are not taxes, but are a charge for service, much like you would pay as a customer. Recently there have been stories in the media that the justice systems of many states are charging user fees for judicial services. Criminal defendants, not those yet found guilty of any crime, are charged user fees for the use of a public defender, a right that has been guaranteed by the federal judicial system. Convicts can be charged user fees for their maintenance in jail.
What happens if you cannot pay your user fee for jail meals, bedding, toilet privileges, etc? Well, you get sent to jail. If you want to defend yourself and request a legal proceeding, that’s another user fee, which you will almost certainly not be able to afford, so you’ll spend more time in jail. Does this sound like debtor prison? Didn’t we do away with that a century or two ago? Like retro clothing styles, maybe debtor prison is making a comeback. I’m guessing the Liberals will not like this and Conservatives will.
And speaking of retro, here’s an idea. Why don’t we have a Democracy Exercise User Fee? If you wished to vote in an election, you would have to pay a user fee. This should not be confused with a Poll Tax, which our PR staff has advised us has a nefarious history used to prevent poor black people from voting. Currently we have a more subtle method, the use of onerous voter ID laws to prevent those folks from voting. But if we have this user fee, we could not only raise revenue to help pay for elections, but we ensure that people who used Democracy Exercise services pay their fair share.
But wait, there’s more. With all these people in jail for debt from their user fees, we’re going to have a labor shortage. And we have a lot of kids who won’t be at school because their parents won’t be able to afford Educational Opportunity User Fee we can implement at what we now call public schools. Kids will be great at these entry level jobs at fast food joints, grocery stores, and so forth. Never mind that we’ll have a future undereducated labor force that will put our economy at a serious disadvantage in the international economy. We can solve this with another user fee. And please, please, please, don’t call this Child Labor. We want to call it New Economy Internships. And, if we’re really clever, we can add a New Economy Internship User Fee, so we won’t have to pay the kids. Woof, that’s some serious capitalist new thinking!
And remember, you read it here first.