Everyone has an opinion about how tax dollars should be spent. Without getting into politics, I want to take a stance on one way that tax dollars shouldn’t be spent: entertainment.
Today was Fleet Week in San Francisco – a free annual boat and air-show over the bay. It’s a first-rate two day performance featuring some of the best pilots in the world showing off their fancy moves, topped off with the world famous Blue Angels. But one thing it certainly isn’t is cheap. The fuel expense of flying jets for hours should be immediately obvious to anyone that doesn’t drive a Chevy Volt. But then factor in the pay for the huge number of military personnel on hand, as well as local police and firemen, the total cost must be astronomical.
Why should everyone have to chip in their hard earned money to provide a good time for someone else? That doesn’t sound fair at all. But who says tax spending has to benefit everyone evenly? How about this question: why should everyone have to chip in hard earned money to provide sturdy roads that everyone doesn’t personally use? You could argue that roads benefit everyone, even to people that don’t drive themselves. But that misses the point – entertainment spending is fundamentally different than infrastructure spending.
The government should not control your entertainment spending! You should have the right to live in the United States and spend zero dollars on entertainment if you want. By using tax dollars to fund events like Fleet Week, you are paying for entertainment, but don’t have to attend if you don’t want. How unfair!
I’d imagine most the expense for Fleet Week is payed by the city of San Francisco from local taxes (with the belief that the event will attract tourists that will spend money). This is much better than using tax dollars from a citizen in Alaska to fund an air-show a thousand miles away. Nonetheless, not everyone in San Francisco necessarily wants the economic boost for the city nor the brief entertainment. Four days of loud airplanes overhead and two days of crowded streets aren’t graciously tolerated universally.
The bottom line is that not everyone appreciates the same type of entertainment. Fleet Week is one thing, but there are many more controversial events that our tax dollars fund. Think of how many events have police stationed for public safety. Do you think each one reimburses the city for the cost of providing police officers? Consider that events scale from providing two police officers to block off a few city blocks of snowy San Francisco for a television show, all the way to providing 4000 officers in downtown LA for the death of a pop icon.
Where do you draw the line? I say the line should be drawn at zero tax dollars contributing to entertainment!
I personally love Fleet Week and would chip in a few dollars for the entertainment. I think this is how it should be handled for entertainment events, all the way down to small-town Fourth of July parades.
Photo: Reuben Yau