Pay your fucking taxes

Hello Everyone,

I wrote this email a little over a year ago. Sadly, the little boy mentioned here, Leo George Laurence Downing, passed away a few weeks after I wrote my first draft. With his birthday upon us, I thought I would finish it and send it out.

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A couple of years ago, I was walking to fencing practice on a Saturday morning, chatting with my brother via text. Nothing big, just keeping up to date with the goings on with his little guy. He sent me a picture taken during our chat. It was a really great shot, showing the three of them, JJJ, hanging out on a lazy Saturday morning. Big smiles on the bunch. It struck me because though we live far apart, through technology I was able to feel very close to them. It meant quite a lot to me. I thought of the complaints one often hears of the damage technology is doing to society, making us coarser and more isolated. In that moment, such criticism seemed unfathomably small minded.

In a Toronto hospital right now, there is a tiny baby, clinging to life in the neonatal intensive care unit. Though small and facing daunting challenges, he's very much alive and fighting. He has a decent shot at making a go of it, considering the circumstances. That we, as a society, have marshaled our resources to give him that chance is to our profound credit. There are machines and doctors and nurses bustling around him at all hours of the day and night. Those machines are expensive and the hospital he's in, one of the very best in the world, is publicly funded.

In the same way that the common criticism about technology is small minded, so too is the common complaint about taxes. They're too damn high, so we hear. While few would begrudge spending money to save this kid's life, but rather, direct their complaints at other kinds spending, that's not how the world works. In an ideal world, our tax dollars would only ever be spent on absolutely necessary things and never get wasted. If you ever find directions to this world, do please share. In the world we actually live, no two people share the same definition of what's necessary, and people are fallible, meaning waste happens.

But that doesn't mean taxes are bad. It means we live in an imperfect world. The miracle of technology that is keeping this kid alive didn't show up over night. It's the end result of many years of education funding, research funding, infrastructure, and more. That's a big ship, and it's easy to lose sight of where it all goes.

But not when you see the outcome. There's a whole system keeping this kid alive, more than just the machines he's hooked up to. It's not cheap.

Pay your fucking taxes.