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After reluctantly (understatement), verging on nauseously,
paying a stupefying amount of taxes this week to a government run by a
snake-oil salesman with a zero approval rating from me, I have money on my mind.
Have you noticed that there is apparently a law of nature about money that when
you are especially struggling to make ends meet, and an unexpected expense from
one area of your life bombards you, that you suddenly experience a landslide of
unexpected expenses from other areas of your life as well? Expensive calamities
attract one another and arrive in herds. Costly events must cast some kind of
vibe out to the universe or generate an expensive-catastrophe pheromone or
something.
It seems that whenever I am at the point of turning out my
pockets and finding only fluff, I get blindsided by some crazy expense, and
then, simultaneously, my car breaks down and my cat gets sick. When I was
pregnant with my second child, and anxious about how to budget for my maternity
leave from work, I must have put that come-take-all-my-money vibe out to the
universe. We went to a restaurant for dinner one evening, and when we returned,
the neighbors descended on us. While we were gone, my 14-year-old cat was hit
by a car. (He loved to go outside and was street savvy, but he couldn’t see
very well or move very fast anymore.) The neighbors took my unfortunate fellow
to a 24-hour vet clinic, where the staff tried to revive him, to the tune of
hundreds of dollars, before he gave up the ghost. Do you have any idea how much
it costs to have someone perform CPR on a cat? I loved that cat, but I had one
child and another on the way, so I was extremely preoccupied with caring for
little people at the time, and frankly would have preferred the cat to have had
the decency to stage a budget demise. I did love that cat, and I wanted his
ashes to bury ceremonially under my apricot tree, so I asked for them to
cremate him, an additional expense.
This story continues. A few days later, I was driving to the
vet to pick up my cat’s ashes and fork over my food money for the family for
that month for services rendered, when the clutch went out in my standard
transmission Honda hatchback. I coasted to a safe stop on the side of the
street and walked (still eight months’ pregnant) to a nearby friend’s house to
call my husband to come get me. This was back in that prehistoric time before
cell phones, which we can all dimly remember if we have taken our gingko. It
was cheaper to replace the clutch than to buy a new car, but the new clutch
would cost the equivalent of two months’ food for our family. In parts alone. Because
my husband actually did the work himself using the How to Fix Your Own Honda
book, which was a thing back then, before computerized cars. Any mechanically
inclined person could actually figure out how to repair their own car using one
of those DIY car repair books. Having worked for four years as a machinist in
the Navy, and with an excellent ability to solve puzzles, Ron could understand
these books. (“It’s easy, you just follow the directions,” he said. Then gently
pointed out that I was holding the book upside down.) Car repair used to be a
good argument in favor of co-habiting with an engineering-type creature. Nowadays,
with everything computerized, ordinary mortals having no specialized training
cannot repair a car using a book. However, it does seem that certain mortals
can, nowadays, fix a computer problem using self-taught skills and a smart
phone. Therefore, I am still co-habiting with an engineering-type creature. Instead
of inventing a self-driving car, I think the auto geniuses should invent a
self-repairing car. But where was I? Oh yes, I was out of food money and
expecting a baby. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.
On another occasion, a few years ago, just when my car
needed a full new set of tires and brake shoes, the vet informed me (on an
annual office visit) that both of my cats needed to have their teeth cleaned.
Cleaning cats’ teeth requires a general anesthetic and runs hundreds of dollars
per cat. Once again the cats and the car had it in for me. At least I wasn’t
pregnant. In fact, all the children had left home by then so fewer mouths to
feed. But it was a year in which I learned the repercussions of a basic law of
economics: when you earn more money you
owe more taxes. What is up with that? Why do I even bother to try to earn more
money in the first place? My tax therapist, AKA accountant, tells me earning
more money is a good thing. He studied economics in college for six years so he
should know, but I still have my doubts. And why can’t I write off the cost of
having the cats’ teeth cleaned as a medical expense? The system is rigged.
The other day I realized that nearly half of my income goes
to the combined cost of taxes, insurance, and interest on my mortgage. I pay an
awful lot of money for invisible commodities. I might just as well be buying
rocks lying around on the moon. This makes me want to give up on this century
and go live in a cabin in the woods at Walden Pond like Henry David Thoreau. When
did life get so complicated? And when did complicated get so expensive? And
when did life insurance get so hard to understand? My life insurance agent says
that if I live to be 100 that my policy will disappear. So I have to die before
I turn 95 for my children to get all the money I put into it. I don’t need this
kind of pressure. The stress could kill me.
I want a time machine to take me back before insurance was
invented, but, for obvious reasons, after the dark chocolate bar was invented. A
fictitious time I guess, because, according to the internet (which eerily knows
everything), insurance was invented in the 1760s and the chocolate bar wasn’t
invented until 1847. That’s just so wrong. And spending the lion’s share of my
income on virtual stuff is also. But then, money itself is virtual. So maybe I
would enjoy living in a time without it. I might get my wish on that if climate
chaos causes a full systems collapse. But I don’t want to give away the plot of
my next novel. Let me say, for the record, that I regret paying my taxes. After
having righteously been a war tax resister for many years in the last century,
in times when I had precious little income for the government to plunder, I
feel ashamed to pay up now, when I have hit my stride and actually earn something
more substantial.
Not long after the 2016 election, I reread Thoreau’s essay
“Civil Disobedience,” which is his reflection on spending one night in jail in
1846 for refusing to pay his poll tax in protest against the American invasion
and occupation of Mexico in the Mexican-American War and the institution of
slavery (in particular the expansion of slavery into the Southwest). In truth,
the poll tax was a more localized tax that was not used to pay for any federal
shenanigans, but Thoreau was apparently a bit fuzzy on how all that worked. He
stood on principle. Much to his chagrin, his aunt paid his poll tax and he was
released in less than 24 hours. How ironic that I dearly wish I could withhold
my income tax 173 years later for similar reasons – to protest the military,
the nonsense at the Mexican border, and the institutionalized racism in this
country. I never went to jail for refusing to pay my taxes. (The government
eventually absconded with my back taxes by forcibly seizing the money from my
bank accounts.) I did go to jail once in protest against nuclear weapons, and I
spent three days in Santa Rita Jail, and I have written about that experience. I want to
point out that I spent more time in jail than Thoreau. Plus I was handcuffed
(he was not, the bum). He managed to turn one night in jail into a 173-year
bestseller and all I got was a T-shirt. (Seriously, I have a Livermore Action
Group T-shirt that says “Santa Rita Peace Camp.”) If Thoreau could get
published writing about one night in jail, you would think I could get
published writing about three days there. But I can’t seem to catch a break.
What’s more, the food at Santa Rita was dreadful, and Thoreau got oatmeal for
breakfast. Is there no justice?
Thoreau's cabin in the woods on Walden Pond.
