Are we a happy nation? Individually, here and there, sure, but what about collectively?

Many of us have it pretty good, even extremely good, and enjoy much of what capitalism provides. Many live well, blessed by the fruit of their labor and ability, or by an inherited leg up in the game. For them the system works A-OK, no real complaints except maybe that some of the fruit of their accomplishment is taken as payment for providing for the common good, or, worse still, providing for others whom providence hasn’t provided as much, or even what constitutes bare essentials.

Whether rich or poor, taxation gets few high fives. “Death and taxes.” Enough said.

However, truth be told, much of that required payment enables the mechanism for acquisition of wealth in the first place, and for protecting that achievement. Taxes provide the means of creating and maintaining the vast matrix of an economic playing field that even the most affluent participants could never afford on their own. No individual could ever pay full freight on all the infrastructure that government makes available, to rich and poor, by spreading the cost out collectively.

The wealthy take full advantage of a system disproportionately paid for by those too poor to avoid their burdensome share of what one might call a national membership fee. For the past half century, the rich have systematically shifted taxes downwards to the middle class while calculatingly reducing their own membership fees. Trickle down economics, realized as a regressive overhauling of taxation favoring the already rich becoming even more so, has never created much collateral benefit for anyone else.

I’ve worked alongside many a blue-collar worker and never heard much mention of the burden of taxation. Same inequality, different day. They simply pay their taxes, for the most part, even if that necessitates undeclared “side-work” to do so. After all, the rich pay lawyers to evade taxes altogether. Some just don’t understand the make-your-own rules reality of being capitalist savvy.

Meanwhile, that side-work is often provided by the rich paying for services “under the table.” The rich just love getting maximum purchasing power for every dollar spent.

One might think this story should end with the rich and poor, arms locked at the elbow and dancing a little jig, celebrating their common defeat of big government’s intrusion on what could be sheer economic bliss if government didn’t exist at all.

Government is the bane of those that convince themselves that they are really, actually, self-made economic achievers owing nothing to anything or anyone. Yet, how many entrepreneurial success stories would have ever become a reality if unaided by organized or unorganized labor, TIF underwriting, tax loopholes, or the nuts and bolts provided by a quasi-socialist system that Americans still insist on labeling capitalist?

If capitalism’s so robust, why do “capitalists” keep extorting public accommodation to finance business here by threatening to simply move elsewhere for some other government’s willingness to enhance the bottom line?

Despite that perverse economic reality, especially paradoxical when championed straight-faced by those on the socialist bashing political right, we might yet again be rudely reminded that government, definitely flawed and admittedly insatiable in its demands for ever increasing funding, is better that wishing for its absence altogether.

Many Republicans in Congress still want to revisit the political theater of defunding the government. That proved a major tactical error last time they tried it, so they apparently want to see if doing something over and over and still expecting a different result actually does define them.

Socialism, at its best, is only capitalism with an improved social conscience. It ain’t communism. When push comes to shove, socialism is what government essentially is. Government, as I’ve always known it, has been the collective use of capitalism’s wealth for the greater good, at least in principle. When that greater good is seen as public assistance to those who most need it, all is wrong within conservative circles. When the greater good is seen as economic stimulus to private business and towards the welfare of corporations, no cries of socialism are heard from that quarter.

Our government has incrementally become a vehicle for diverting collective wealth to the rarefied top 10 percent of the population. Some of the largest corporations pay no federal taxes at all. The obscenely rich keep getting richer while the middle class is being unrelentingly crushed. Unfettered banking practices and investment recklessness all but destroyed our entire economy in a mere decade of reduced government oversight, and still it continues.

For those obsessed with the capitalist dream of maximum profit, government is perceived as an enemy. Government is what stands between the consumer and outright I-dare-you-to-catch-me-or-do-something about-it greed. Yet, when caught, any temporary punishment becomes just another calculated part of doing business. Capitalism too often pursues the bottom line, not the highest road.

Given capitalism’s recurring crippling economic downturns, maybe socialism, that mistakenly imagined boogeyman, is worth a proper user-friendly introduction. After all, it was unrestrained socialism that pulled capitalism’s bacon out of the fire this last time around. Just ask Detroit.

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.