When the debater Buck exclaimed: "Whoa!," he meant to say: "LetÆs not rush too fast ahead with the prepaid staples, but instead letÆs stop to smell the daisies on our way!" Then he drew my attention to shelter, air, and water, saying: "What about shelter? Air? Water? These are all necessary to each human life. Should these be covered also?"Little did he, or I, were aware at the time, that all these items were already prepaid by us through our taxes. The clean air we breath does not come cheaply, requiring all the anti-pollution measures to reduce the effect of greenhouse gasses on our environment. Clean water too is prepaid. It is supplied free of charge in restaurants, in gasoline stations, in hotels, offices, and all public water fountains, and wherever water taps are accessible. It does not come cheaply, considering water purification expenses and the cost of water pipes and plumbing. And yet, no one ever asks the person drinking water whether he had worked to earn such a privilege, or whether he had paid for it.
Public health and welfare mandate that this be the case, because if each thirsty person had to pay for a glass of tap water, the penniless and the insolvent one would drink from the rain puddles or rivers and pose a threat to the public health.
Shelters are also prepaid, but discriminatingly, only for the homeless, which irks the taxpayer. They should be available to anyone who is unwilling to pay for hotels.
Other prepaid items in our society are public washrooms. Pick up a hitch-hiker on the road and then stop at a gasoline station. Without paying a cent, he will use the well-kept, clean washroom facilities, dispose of half a roll of toilet paper, paper towels, hot water, and not even bother to flush the toilet. He might not have worked even one day in his life, and yet no one ever stops him to ask for the proof of his worthiness, or sends him to answer the call of nature in the bushes.
We make all these things available for free (i.e. on a tax-prepaid basis) to all people because we are civilized. If we did not prepay for public washrooms through general and sales taxes we would have to put up with swarms of flies, outbursts of epidemics, odoriferous dark alleys, parks littered with flying paper, and dirty shoes.
On deeper reflection, we also have a sort of prepaid food system. We prepay through our taxes for the meals consumed by members of the armed services, by the prison-inmates, by the sick in the hospitals, by those receiving the food stamps, by the seniors, by the disabled, by those on welfare rolls, by those getting their subsistence from the food banks, by the panhandlers, etc. We are thus well on the way to the Universal Prepaid Food Staples Plan. In fact, we are almost there! All we need to do is to put on our thinking caps, iron a few wrinkles, muster enough courage to save money, and enshrine the right to food in the national constitution.
This accomplished, one can imagine a miracle happening: While saving money, reducing our budgetary deficit and our national debt, and without revolutionary upheavals, we take care of peopleÆs needs, protect our environment, give a true meaning to the free enterprise, unbridle the capitalism, free people from their slavery, do away with unemployment, forgo our futile effort to make anyone love his neighbour and be his brotherÆs keeper. At the same time we become Christians despite ourselves, i.e. act in a civilized manner, and give food even to our enemy if he is hungry, and something to drink if he is thirsty (Prov.?).
Walter Prytulak
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