A Vermont State Representative’s message to VT businesses: Sure you are living with the fifth-highest tax burden in the country, but if you complain about it, basically you just are admitting that you are bad corporate citizens.
Okay, so that was a paraphrase. Here’s the real quote.
“When business generally whines about the high tax burden, the burdensome regulatory environment, whatever, it concerns me by sending a signal that they care less than they should about being good corporate citizens.”
You can read the rest here.
To be honest, I really don’t know where to start commenting on this.
There is more than one way to be a good citizen, corporate or otherwise. One way is by delegating your responsibility to the government, letting them make the decisions and determine what is best for everyone, and pay your share of the taxes to make it happen.
If that was the only way to be a good citizen, well, then Rep. Kitzmiller would be correct in his assertion that to complain about high taxes means that one does not want to be a good citizen.
But there is another way to be a good citizen. That is when you take it upon yourself to do the right thing, without the government forcing you to. That is when you determine needs in your community and work to address those needs.
In that case, your reluctance to fund a bloated bureaucracy, one that is often out of touch with the needs of the people it serves, has no bearing on your goodness of citizenship.
