“They are commensurate with the increasing prosperity of Luna, which is linked to the well-being of Earth.”
“Yes, yes. Listen, por favor, I’m not personally unsympathetic to the poor, nor unwilling to help relieve them and cope with the rest of Earth’s problems. After all, I’m North American by birth and Ecuadoran by citizenship. But the Terran Moondwell-er who seldom sets foot there, the Lunarian who never does, they don’t feel that way and it’s not reasonable to expect they should. Where’s the quid pro quo for them?
“Furthermore, they hate income tax, and would hate it no matter how modest it was, because it’s an invasion of privacy. We value personal privacy very highly here, Governor. It was scarce and precious in the early days. We still often have to forgo it, sometimes for long stretches like on a field trip or a space voyage. The desire for it is downright fierce in the Lunarians, I suppose because our Moon culture reinforces a predisposition that got built into their genes. What people here do about the income tax, they don’t think of as cheating, but resistance.”
Wahl frowned. “It will be difficult to pass legislation exempting them from it. Even if the Federation waived it, the countries of their citizenship scarcely would. Income tax is essential to the modern state.”
Beynac smiled crookedly. “Some would say that’s the best reason of all for abolishing it.”
“Please, let us be realistic.” Wahl paused. “I daresay that privacy fetish is also the cause of widespread obstructionism toward the census and other govern4 mental information-gathering activities?” She nodded. “And yet I hear that the Lunar magnates have quite efficient methods of their own/’
“In Lunar eyes, that’s different. Don’t blame me, I’m only telling you. But think. You’re a Catholic, right? Well, then you tell your priest things you’d bloody anybody else’s nose for asking about.”
He contemplated her for a while before he said 16w, “What you mean is that the conflict is, at bottom, not economic or political but cultural. We do not have brewing anything like the First North American Revolution. No, it is to be a rising against occupation and exploitation by foreigners, aliens.”
“You are an intelligent man,” she replied gravely.