Where there’s smoke…

This question, as all good questions do, begins with a cast iron skillet.

My wife is-and this is putting it in a way only a loving and understanding husband can-security conscious. When I buried house keys in our back yard, she dug them up to make sure no rapey yard guy found them by accident and broke in. Or she dug them up to make sure when she got locked out twice while I was on the road that she would have no recourse but to wait until a neighbor came home so she could get back in the house. Thinking back, I’m glad she did this because, though we could’ve used somewhere like flat rate locksmith Atlanta GA to help us get out of this predicament (something that they have done before), I don’t think my wife would’ve liked calling them out for something that is so easily resolvable. It saves a lot of time, after all. But I don’t think she was too happy with me. It doesn’t matter, because love means knowing when to let your wife dig up the back-up keys and hide them where no one will ever find them.

This story is about love. This story is about Valentines. This story is about a cast iron skillet and me searing meat for a Valentine’s dinner and ignoring the smoke billowing up around my face. Because, in case you haven’t experienced it, love means getting smoke in your face. And love sometimes means getting to know your public servants.

We’d been in the new house for less than a year, and my wife insisted (see above) on the Hollywood-style security in our suburban home. I’m not sure why she wanted this, as I thought that our home had enough security features as it was, but she obviously wanted more. If I had it my way, I would much rather spend some money so we can complete any construction projects that we have, and boy is it a lot. We’ve already done the roof, and if it wasn’t for somewhere like this roofers Raleigh company, we’d still be sorting it out now. That is one thing that we can tick off the list. But we have so much more to do, however, that is going to be put on the back burner for now, especially as the wife wants to improve our security system.

Before making the move to the new house, we had been house-hunting for ages, but we couldn’t seem to find a home that we both fell in love with. I was almost ready to give up on the idea of buying a new home until the house that we’re in now made itself known to us. It was amazing. Low and behold, my wife thought so too, and it wasn’t long before we were on the phone contacting the best movers in atlanta to help us transport all our goods over to the new property. They did a great job, and then began our life in this home.

At the time, I remember thinking that it had great security. My wife, being the amazing woman that she is, wanted more of a Hollywood feel to our security. I – a frequent traveler of questionable repute -relented. We got the works. If a North Korean dictator woke up with a scorching case of scabies, our security system gave us a heads up.

I was cooking. It was February, a time of Hallmark love and dinners prepared with the kind of affection only societal obligation requires. I was searing meat in a house I’d known for less than a year. And, if you have ever cooked with a cast iron skillet you know what that can mean.

When the alarm sounded, I stumbled for the keypad to punch in the same number I did every time I came in at 3am. Nothing happened. The alarm kept making the kind of noise that brings the neighbors. It also brought a lot of sirens and a fairly muscular firefighter who came into my kitchen to make sure none of my property was at risk. I assured him that everything was fine and offered him Valentine’s dinner. He declined.

These two things do not play nicely together

These two things do not play nicely together

I also offered-if he wanted to drop by again-to donate to the next firehouse fundraising drive. Why? Because the poor and perfectly-muscled dude wasn’t making any extra money by getting up and coming to my house. In fact, he probably missed out on some pretty good firehouse chili. I felt sort of bad.

In the end-yes, after the second time it happened-it cost me exactly nothing. The only reason the fire department came to my house both times was because of the contract I had with the private security company. The firefighters got paid by the taxpayers to respond when I-a semi-privileged and cast-iron-skilleted suburban warrior-got jiggy with the chicken on a Valentine’s night when my home alarm was feeling a little needy. The public servants would have made the exact same salary regardless of whether they were fighting my seared chicken breast or a five-alarm fire.

And now that has me wondering why we bother.

Why do we pay taxes for firefighting? Honestly, is fire such a rampant problem in our society that we need to pay annual taxes to fund fire protection? I mean, we all know that firefighters spend most of their time sitting around frying turkeys and directing traffic after fender-benders that keep us from getting to Old Navy clearance sales. When it comes down to it, people who work hard enough can afford sprinkler systems that could do the same job as a bunch of guys who wash their trucks for half of their working day.

In fact, why do we bother paying for police officers when we could hire private security companies to make sure our property and persons were adequately protected?

Or why do we bother to pay taxes to fund people to teach our children?

Why do pay taxes to pay people to build our roads?

Or monitor disease outbreaks?

People who work hard enough can afford other people to protect them from those dangers, right? Why do we get government involved at all?

I guess it’s because we have decided that these all are important, nay, essential parts of maintaining a safe and orderly society. We want to make sure our houses don’t burn down. We want to make sure people don’t rob us. We want to make sure our children are educated. We consider all of those things an integral part of living and moving forward as a people.

And you know what? They are. I was joking before. Firefighters, police officers, and educators are among the bravest and most important people I’ve ever had the privilege to know. They deserve a portion of the money I make because they provide services I can’t always provide for myself. What’s more, they make sure other people in my community have the same protection, and that means my neighbors keep their houses, don’t become victims of crime, and have children who have a chance at education that turns them into productive members of society.

Why don’t we don’t actively fight against these taxes?

Why are we not arguing that we shouldn’t give firefighting and police protection handouts to people who haven’t worked to earn them?

We all don’t use those services equally. We may never use the services at all, but we don’t question their absolute necessity. Why is that?

I know there is a reason, because otherwise America wouldn’t be in the massive debate we are today. I know there is a reason, because I pay for fire insurance and fire security, but I also pay taxes for firefighters, the people I’m actually trusting to physically save me. It’s unquestionably the most important part of the process, and that’s the one we control via government rather than private industry. Why is that?

The only answer I’ve come up with is this: there has to be a line between what we pay a government to do and what we pay private industry to do, because we count on the free market to determine what’s good and bad, what’s really necessary and what’s unnecessary. Otherwise, capitalism is dead. Worse, I’m told it would make us commies. And as a guy who grew up in the 70s and 80s, I know that being a commie is gray and sucky.

So, if I’m to accept that because I really don’t want Obama making my lunch sandwiches or spraying for palmetto bugs in my house, where exactly am I to draw the line?

Should we stop funding public firefighters?

Should we stop paying for public education?

And if not, I ask why those services are more important than the doctor who has to operate on somebody in my family next month.

Oh, yeah, there’s that. Much like a stupid cooking mishap or my car getting burgled, we have a little family medical thing we have to take care of. It’s nothing too serious, but it came out of nowhere, and it is going to be the kind of expensive that would hurt the pocketbooks of people who don’t have decent insurance, the kind of people who don’t qualify for government assistance but also don’t have a guaranteed 100% payment and could end up spending a long time paying for the emergency care.

It’s made me think back to that cast iron skillet and wonder what would have happened if I had really started a grease fire and there weren’t such a thing as government-funded firefighters. How long would I be paying for that out-of-nowhere emergency? How would losing that money affect my ability to be a productive member of society?

I know there are people on both sides of the privatization debate. I have friends who would be much happier if we privatized everything from the Centers For Disease Control to the ATF. I have friends who would be happy if we had Karl Marx over for a beer and wings. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. The question is, how do we as a society decide where to draw that line?

I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I think the question is instructive in itself, and it might help us have a better discussion about how we think about what is essential for everyone.

Why are some things so essential that we make sure we fund them with taxes without complaint, and why are other things too important to let government handle?

Put another way, why do we pay taxes in case I set my house on fire but not in case I set myself on fire?

Brad Willis

Brad Willis is a writer based in Greenville, South Carolina. Willis spent a decade as an award-winning broadcast journalist. He has worked as a freelance writer, columnist, and professional blogger since 2005. He has also served as a commentator and guest on a wide variety of television, radio, and internet shows.

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8 Responses

  1. StB says:

    But if you set yourself on fire, the fire department is going to come. Do they not provide paramedic services in your part of the country? In Milwaukee they are the first responders so I see the answer to your question be that you are paying taxes for both.

  2. Brad Willis says:

    You bring up an interesting point, and you’re right. The difference, I think, lies in the fact that when it’s all said and done, that ambulance will still have a bill attached to it.

  3. CJ says:

    So what you are asking is why we don’t have a fully tax-payer funded health care system.

    That’s simple. Health care is one of the most profitable private businesses in America. A lot of people are making a lot of money in health care and they spend a lot of that money making sure the government doesn’t put an end to that.

    The Affordable Care Act ended up being a massive giveaway to health insurance companies. The government, for the first time I can think of, is forcing you to buy a private product whether you like it or not. And if you don’t, the government will fine you to use that fine to buy a private produce for someone else.

    This half measure is the worst thing to happen to health care. Either leave it in the private sector or create a truly universal health care system that’s government run. It’s one or the other in my mind.

  4. Julius Goat says:

    Some things are good for people. Some things are bad for people.

    Some things are profitable. Some things are not.

    Some things that are good for people are profitable. The free market does pretty well with those, and probably doesn’t need any help.

    Some things that are bad for people are profitable. The free market does pretty well with those, and probably needs some control to prevent them from doing quite so well with them. Unless we decide we like profits more than people.

    Some things that are good for people are not profitable, or would cease to be good if the profit motive’s natural desire for growth were applied . These thing probably shouldn’t be privatized. I’d put the justice system and prisons in here. Probably education. Probably that muscular gent from the FD.

    Some things that are bad for people are not profitable. These should generally be avoided. Somehow we still have Kenny G.

  5. change100 says:

    @StB – Really? Paramedic care is taxpayer-funded? I call booshit.

    If Brad set himself on fire, he’d still end up with a hefty bill. The paramedics charged us over $1,200 for a 7-mile ambulance ride and a couple of gauze bandages when Pauly was in a serious car wreck. If I had loaded him into a cab, bleeding and covered in glass shards, we’d have saved almost a month’s rent. But when a loved one just came within inches of death, how is a person supposed to pause and think “Hmmm, perhaps this ambulance ride is not my best financial option? Maybe I should read through my insurance binder to make sure this service is covered even though the love of my life could be rife with internal injuries.”

    Yeah. I’m sure that’s what our Founding Fathers intended. But an insurance company trying to suck every possible dollar they can out of hard-working people? It’s a no-brainer. Gotta pay those shareholders.

    Fighting fires, policing, health care. All three are about protecting and saving lives, only the “free market” has co-opted the latter by paying off the right folks to keep their disgusting racket going.

  6. Ryan K says:

    Replace “grease fire” with “rare disease that isn’t profitable to cure” and you’ve probably rendered your question rhetorical.

  7. G-Rob says:

    Put another way, why do we pay taxes in case I set my house on fire but not in case I set myself on fire?

    Because we pay taxes to make sure your firetrap of a suburban mansion doesn’t spread to MY firetrap of a suburban hovel. That’s why.

    If you set YOURSELF on fire…I pay taxes to extinguish the fire before you, streaking across the neighborhood like a human blowtorch, set ME on fire.

    Once the threat to ME is extinguished…literally in this case…you’re on your own.

    That is the literal and honest answer to your question.

  8. Brad Willis says:

    G-Rob, what you say is perfectly true. Self-interest may be humanity’s single-biggest motivating factor. I guess what I have a hard time understanding is how people don’t take a longer view of how a healthy populace of people who aren’t bankrupt actually is beneficial to everybody. That is, my self-interest is actually helped by my neighbor not developing diabetes or developing health problems due to obesity that keeps him out of work (lost working hours, etc). I know you and are probably aren’t far from agreement. I just wonder how many other people (normal, non-corporation type people) can grasp that.