So for a while it looked like all of January was going to be a thaw. Once, the January thaw was a short reprieve, a brief reminder that winter would eventually end. This year after one hard cold snap we were left wondering when winter might begin.

One way we still knew it was January, though, was that tax materials began arriving. First came the town property tax notice. It’s not due until April but, like a thaw, the notice is a sign post for what is to come. Second came the package from our long-time tax person (my husband considers her part of my dowry, she has been so valuable). The package is a reminder of the work ahead, but it also makes the task easier — kind of like the snow shoes waiting to help you tramp through the drifts.

I don’t actually mind paying taxes. There have been lean years when those bills were tough to pay. But I’ve always believed that we created government to do the heavy lifting on things we can’t readily do ourselves — roads, bridges, vaccines, safeguards against poisons and pollution and defective products or unfair practices. I also believe in the “commons,” those resources, especially air, land and water, that we all need to protect for mutual survival. In the old days, Northfield, like Boston, had a “commons” at its heart, shared land where animals could graze and people met for many common purposes. These days it’s harder to see the commons — now it is a a state road with wide sidewalk edges. I believe we should use government to protect the commons for the benefit of all and sometimes taxes come into it.

Our family has benefited from so many public services — public schools for everyone in our family; an excellent public university for my husband; the ability to live car-free for 13 years in Cambridge thanks to public transit; Social Security and Medicare that figure importantly into our retirement; Covid vaccines that may have saved our lives during the pandemic; our beloved Dickinson Memorial public library that is the heart of our town. All these are examples of tax dollars well spent.

One thing that didn’t thaw in January was our political winter. Hardened positions, frozen in outmoded policy ideas, have heaped up on many fronts: abolish the IRS, defund Medicare and Medicaid, erase Social Security, crash the global economy over a misunderstood debt ceiling. What nonsense! Funding for these backbone programs, some bellow loudly, will soon run out. The way to make sure there is no change to that is to require higher income citizens to pay their fair share; and it should not be possible for corporations, now considered “persons” thanks to the Supreme Court, to avoid taxes altogether as so many do. Cutting taxes, it has now been widely demonstrated, does not create jobs or strengthen the economy; it only makes the rich richer. Unfortunately, partisan positions have muddled public understanding: Paul Krugman states: “Republicans rate the economy worse now than they did in June 1980, when unemployment was 7.6 percent and inflation was 14 percent,” (NY Times, Jan. 27). Right now unemployment stands about 3.5% and inflation is closer to 3% by various measures.

No one likes to be deeply in debt, but debt is a time-honored tool for investment that generates future benefits. Many of us individually have incurred debt to reach important goals. Our country has the means to use debt as a budget management tool to benefit the whole. With vision and prudence, debt has helped solve terrifying challenges like defeating Nazi Germany, lifting the country out of the Great Depression, or pulling us back from the brink of the 2008 financial crisis (caused, in large part, by unscrupulous bank behavior). Right now we need to invest in reversing global warming and the new Inflation Reduction Act is a bold government effort to do so. I willingly pay taxes for such goals. We will often have disagreements about what to pay for, so that’s where political action comes in and, ultimately, voting.

Punxsutawney Phil will soon give us a prediction for winter’s end this year. We need to end this political winter too — only with shared knowledge and common goals can we thaw that iceberg. Lengthening sunshine brings the spring; hopefully, commitment to equity and the strong light of understanding can help us find the common sense path toward a future that supports us all.

Judy Wagner lives in Northfield. 

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