www.roanoke.com

By Marjorie Rucker

Rucker lives in Bedford.

I am continually amazed at the number of politicians and my fellow citizens who seem to think that the United States can survive without the citizenry paying taxes. Do they realize what our taxes do for us? I really don't think they do.

And when I hear the term "government" spoken in disdain, I think, "Don't these people know that we are the government? We are all in this together. We make the government what it is. Yes, that means liberals and conservatives.

I want to mention just a few things that our government (local, state and federal) does for us: national security, schools, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, roads, national parks, protection of money, museums, public health, libraries, garbage pickup, clean water, recycling efforts, waste management, policing, bank regulation (hopefully), firefighters, emergency workers, and I could go on.

I have named only a minuscule number of benefits from our governments. Do all government agencies work as efficiently as we would like? I would say probably not. Is it our duty as citizens to speak to this? I would say yes.

I just wanted to say to people that we benefit from our collective taxes.

There would be some who say, "I don't need these services, so I shouldn't have to pay these taxes." They are the ones who would like to privatize everything. Think now. How would that work? Not very well.

Do some people pay more taxes? Absolutely. Guess what? They make more money. We are a great country. Civilization and all its benefits are expensive.