Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Possibly one of the most inane phrases ever uttered about modern governments is Oliver Wendell Holmes’s oft-quoted phrase stating that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

This reflected the naïve view, often pushed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, of the so-called “social contract.”

According to this idea, we pay taxes, and in return the state provides order, protection, and all the blessings of civilization. 

Presumably included among all those taxpayer-funded civilizational “services” provided by governments one can find “fire suppression.”

But, you wouldn’t know it from watching tens of thousands of residents flee their homes in southern California and Los Angeles County as fires rage. As of Wednesday at midday, five different fires in southern California are still zero-percent contained. Nor is this some hard-to-reach rural area with few roads and little infrastructure. These fires are right in the middle of suburban cities and towns. Yet, it is all apparently too much for lavishly-funded government agencies to handle. 

Indeed, government authorities in Los Angeles County and California had neglected infrastructure to the point that it became useless in many areas in terms of battling the blazes.

In the early hours of the Palisades fire, firefighters found themselves hamstrung by a lack of water from fire hydrants. In spite of years of warning about the growing threat of fires in the region, California bureaucrats couldn’t be bothered with upgrading the water system to ensure reliable water supply and pressure in case of a major fire. 

Since 2022, California firefighters have been bragging that they’ve been sending fire suppression equipement to Ukraine. This wasn’t paid for by firefighters, of course. It was funded by the taxpayers. 

Meanwhile, the mayor of the City of Los Angeles—who is paid more than $300,000 per year—is on a taxpayer-funded trip to Ghana to attend the inauguration of the new president of that west African country. What possible benefit this could bring to ordinary people in Los Angeles remains a mystery, but residents are certainly paying for what is essentially a vacation for the mayor. 

Before she left for her vacation, however, the mayor supported large budget cuts to fire suppression services, as well as to other basic services like sanitation and public works. This was necessitated by the city’s budget crisis stemming from years of waste, mismanagement, and legal settlements. In 2024, the city owes $47 million to residents who have sustained injuries from the city’s crumbling infrastructure and police incompetence.

Is all this failing infrastructure a result of cuts to taxes in the city? Of course not. Taxes in Los Angeles are among the highest in the nation. And, all of that is on top of California’s debilitating income taxes which include the highest progressive state income taxes. California has the highest tax burden in the nation. 

Moreover, it’s hard to hire sufficient fire suppression workers when unionized firefighters earn outrageously inflated government salaries. As The Daily Mail reported in 2024, the LA fire captain Jason Getchius earned $823,000 in 2023. In California is it not unusual to find government employees earning mid-six-figures by milking the government overtime system. 

The police are notorious for doing this as well. Naturally, these enormous salaries for police don’t translate into low crime rates. 

The woman in charge of water and public works in Los Angeles, Janisse Quinones, makes at least $750,000. Like most government officials, her salary does not correlate with her competence. 

This is the real reason we pay taxes: to keep the ruling class (high ranking officials) and the larger parasite class (government employees and government contractors) living lifestyles of relative opulence and ease while private sector workers toil to produce all the real wealth. If it seems worse in California it’s because the grift is at a far more advanced stage there. For example, government services like fire suppression and infrastructure are cut in order to fund lavish pensions for state employees. This is true in many states, but it’s especially bad in California. 

Dry fire hydrants. Millionaire firemen. High crime. Crumbling infrastructure. Is this that “civilization” that Oliver Wendell Holmes was talking about? Possibly. Contra the clueless Holmes, however, taxes are definitely not the price we pay for civilization. If anything, taxes destroy civilization by funneling resources to extractive state organs which work primarily to enrich themselves and the ruling oligarchy. 

And why should ordinary people expect any real services in exchange for all those enormous taxes they pay, year after year? They shouldn’t. The state looks out for the state and its closest friends. It doesn’t look out for the people who pay the bills, except on occasion and by accident in pursuit of some good public relations. Instead, state organizations like the City of Los Angeles will spend endless hours and mountains of resources on rewarding politically connected interest groups and on endless meetings about micro-aggressions and diversity hires and on censoring critics. Fighting fires? That’s a mere afterthought.