Taxpayers vs Citizens

Written December 29. 2003, at 18:19 GMT.

Via David Weinberger, an excellent quote from an Inlander article by Robert Herold titled New Year, New Way:

"Taxpayers are just full of anxiety. Citizens seek to participate in a constructive manner. Taxpayers seek always to reduce public life to a balance sheet. Citizens seek ways of broadening and deepening public life. Taxpayers, by definition, live in a private world, and they don't much like government penetrating that world. The word 'taxes' symbolizes that penetration. Citizens seek life in the polis. Citizens live in a world of values, which, when agreed upon, determine how we will live."

Sharp. Btw, I guess I think of myself as a citizen type.

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