With tax season upon us, it is almost obligatory for Americans to complain about what they’re shelling out to Uncle Sam. According to Gallup polls, 46 percent of Americans think their taxes are too high.

The good news is that figure is near rock-bottom for the past 50 years; the bad news is that tax-related violence has been on the rise for the same period. The most recent example of this trend occurred last month, when software engineer Joe Stack, enraged by disputes with the Internal Revenue Service going back to the 1980s, flew a small plane into an IRS building in Texas.

In a lengthy essay/suicide note posted on his website, Stack styled himself after the early American patriots of “no taxation without representation” fame, reminding us all of the unique prestige of tax revolt in American history. As Stack points out, some of the first lessons American children receive about their nation’s history equates taxes to oppression, and revolt against those taxes to the struggle for liberty and justice for all. This probably contributes to Americans’ widespread distrust of taxation, and the acceptance of that distrust as normal and natural.

But that view of taxation is not shared worldwide. In fact, citizens of some countries are actually happy about paying taxes. If you’re an American reading these words, that statement probably sounds pretty far-fetched. But consider this: the citizens of Denmark pay the highest income taxes in the world (an average of 48.3 percent), and are also the happiest people in the world.

It’s not just that Danes pay those high income taxes: they also pay a Value Added Tax of 25 percent on every cup of coffee or pair of sneakers they buy, making the outcry in my hometown of Chicago over having the highest sales tax of any major city in the US (a whopping 10.25 percent) look picayune by comparison. And then there’s Denmark’s tax on new cars: a heart-stopping 180 percent. So if you buy a car with an MSRP of € 20,000 , you’ll pay an additional € 36,000 to get the car registered and licensed.

The Danish car tax, in and of itself, would probably be enough to provoke armed rebellion in the United States. So why do the citizens of Denmark not only tolerate the array of taxes they pay, but appear downright happy about them?

And just to be clear, Danes aren’t just generally happy, or happy despite the taxes they pay. Rather, they are specifically happy about paying taxes! Take this exchange, for example, from a recent series of “person in the street” interviews from Copenhagen by United States National Public Radio:

KESTENBAUM [Ed—NPR reporter]: You think paying taxes is terrific?

Ms. BAUOLASON [Ed—resident of Copenhagen]: I do actually think it is terrific.

From an American perspective, Denmark “seems to violate the laws of the economic universe.”

The key to this attitude seems to lie in Danes’ trust in government and each other—something I noted in an earlier post. As this video interview with a pair of Danish sociologists suggests, this trust stems from several factors. Among the most important is the widely-shared belief that their society is just, and that socio-economic goods are equitably distributed. As a result, many Danes seem satisfied that they are getting their money’s worth–that is, they enjoy tangible benefits of the taxes they pay in terms of universal health care, tuition-free education through the university level, and employment benefits and security far beyond anything available in the United States.

Meanwhile, things could not be more different in the United States, which ranks 23rd in the world happiness rankings, and where distrust of government has been virtually axiomatic since the Reagan era—if not before. This helps account for a paradox: while the United States has among the lowest income tax rates in the world, and we have nothing like the VAT and auto registration taxes that Danes pay, Americans rarely challenge each others’ complaints about “high taxes.”

In fact, one of the remarkable things about Joe Stack’s anti-tax rant/suicide note is how much it resembles what now constitutes “mainstream” rhetoric on taxation in America—particularly in the aftermath of the government bailout of financial firms following the 2008 economic crisis.

Stack wrote:

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?

Compare this to CNBC newsman Rick Santelli’s now legendary on-air rant of February 2009, in which he sounds many of the same notes as Stack, using virtually identical arguments and references to American history:

So while Stack’s violent actions took this rhetoric to the extreme, the evidence suggests that he was no outlier in his  perspective on taxation in America: his basic views are apparently shared by a wide swath of his fellow citizens, from television news reporters to the Tea Party movement to think tanks like the conservative Cato Institute.

What accounts for this extreme disparity between American and Danish attitudes toward taxes? And what does this have to do with the differences between the two countries in terms of happiness?

The evidence suggests that both phenomena stem from perceptions of fairness. While—as the two video interviews from Denmark suggest—many Danes believe that they benefit personally from their tax contributions, the rhetoric of people like Stack, Santelli and others suggest that many Americans believe they get little to nothing in return for their tax contributions. Instead, they believe their taxes benefit the “free riders” in US society—whether conceived as “welfare queens” at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, or as corporations and executives at the top.

Thus, Stack signed off with this bitter epigram: “The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.” For him, it was a bitterness unto death; for like-minded Americans, these beliefs contribute to a sense of pervasive injustice that frustrates their “pursuit of happiness” and makes April 15 a day of national resentment rather than a simple administrative deadline.

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Brooke Harrington is Associate Professor of Economic Sociology at the Copenhagen Business School. She is the author of two books: “Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism” (Princeton University Press, 2008) and “Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating” (Stanford University Press, 2009). She is currently doing research on offshore banking.  Harrington blogs at our fellow Contexts blog, Economic Sociology.

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Amanda S. took a screen shot while doing her taxes online at Turbo Tax.  The program asks if the filer is married or gay married:

What a fascinating moment in U.S. history.  In some states a person can marry someone of the same sex, in others they cannot.  Tax programs trying to help people file their federal and state taxes need to record both kinds of marriages because they collect information for both tax returns simultaneously in order to reduce the time burden on the client.

But why not just ask people if they were married?  Perhaps the people who designed these questions thought that the term “marriage” is so deeply associated with heterosexuality that it wouldn’t occur to people who were married to someone of the same sex to check it.  Then again, I would think that those gay couples who are legally married would be especially cognizant of their right to check the “marriage” box whether same-sex marriage was specified or not.

Or are there different tax rules applied to gay and straight marriage?

In any case, if we’re going to separate homo- and hetero-marriage, why not label “marriage” as “opposite-sex marriage” or “other-sex marriage”?  Why normalize heterosexual marriage (real marriage, you know, the original marriage, marriage marriage!) and mark homosexual marriage (the gay kind, duh, so gay)?

I don’t know what they were thinking… but it’s fascinating.

Happy tax day U.S. Americans!

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

At Racialicious, Arturo R. García lodges a complaint against the modern makeover of Speedy Gonzales which is, apparently, underway.  Actor and Comedian George Lopez is scheduled to voice the character in a feature cartoon.

Starting in 1955, Speedy was a recurring character in Warner Brothers cartoons.  Dubbed “The Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico,” Speedy wore a sombrero and spoke in broken English.  In the cartoon below, he helps other Mexican mice steal cheese from across the Mexico/U.S. border guarded by a “Gringo cat” (Sylvester):

Lopez’s wife is on record saying that the new Speedy will not be the same racist caricature, but instead a Mexican boy who “…comes from a family that works in a very meticulous setting, and he’s a little too fast for what they do.”  But García isn’t convinced.  He writes:

The thing is, it’s not just about Speedy, but about the universe he inhabited. If this new film strays from the original Andale! Andale! schtick, critics will decry that the character was neutered by “the PC Patrol.” If it doesn’t, the couple has resurrected a very problematic cartoon character (two, if Slowpoke Rodriguez is also brought back.) What would be the next step – the return of Heckle & Jeckle? Is bringing back an “established brand” like this really a better option than creating an original character and building something positive from the ground up?

He also points out that Lopez’s success has rested largely on his own reproduction of racist stereotypes (of the whites-and-Latinos-are-so-different-hahaha! and Latinos-are-so-Latino-hahaha! varieties). For example:

Yeah… so I can’t imagine that that guy would ever participate in a project stereotyping Latinos.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see but, like García, I’m skeptical.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Considering what obvious justice suffrage for women was, it’s surprising that it took 62 years from the birth of the U.S. suffrage movement to come up with an equally simple way of making the case. But in 1910, the National American Woman Suffrage Association distilled their best arguments into one-paragraph gems printed on postcards. Their “Think It Over” series proved to be not only an excellent consciousness-raiser but fundraiser as well, since NAWSA received a commission on each card sold. Here’s a particularly insightful one:

Some other sample sayings on these postcards:

The Declaration of Independence was the direct result of taxation without representation. Either exempt WOMAN from taxation or grant her the right of Equal Suffrage. What is sauce for the GANDER is sauce for the Goose.

Woman, if granted the right of Equal Suffrage, would not endeavor to pass new laws for the benefit of WOMAN only. She would work and vote with MAN on all legislation. …

WOMAN should not condemn MAN because she has not the right of franchise–rather condemn parents for having trained their sons since the beginning of time, in the belief that MAN only is competent to vote.

Of course, suffragists didn’t rely entirely on gentle logic. At the bottom of each card was the phrase, “An ounce of persuasion precedes a pound of coercion.” Symbolism was employed as well. In the upper left corner was a shield of stars and stripes shown as having a dark spot in the center, labeled “The ballot is denied to woman” with “The blot on the escutcheon” inscribed underneath.

Though people today generally associate black and white images and grim determination with the suffragists, here’s proof from 1916 that they could be colorful and whimsical:

The disarming image of a child was common and popular, as above and below. The following image from 1913 was created by  Bernhardt C. Wall (1872-1956), an exception to the rule that most postcard artists labored anonymously:

No doubt the suffragists were well ahead of their time, but the card that follows from about 1916 is unusually far-sighted. (Of course, Victoria Woodhull had already run for president in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party ticket.)

Lots of adults were expressing similar sentiments in 1914, when the card below was in circulation. On May 2, 1914, there were more than 1,000 coordinated demonstrations, parades and rallies nationwide, and that same year the all-male Senate took its first vote on a suffrage amendment since 1887. (It gained a majority, 35-34, but was still well short of the 2/3 required). Of course, the term most suffrage workers in the U.S. preferred for themselves was “suffragist,” because “suffragette” was originally used by opponents in Britain and then the U.S. as a derisive term implying “little voter,” or to give the false impression that all supporters of woman suffrage were female. But in this case it seems uniquely appropriate, since it’s a cute little girl with a ballot in her hand.  The postcard was sent as a Valentine on February 12, 1914 from “Marjorie” to “George”.

Finally, this still-appropriate postcard, issued in Great Britain in 1909 by the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, shows a woman being pulled away from “Justice” by “Prejudice.” The WWSL was founded in June, 1908, by playwright Cicely Hamilton and novelist Bessie Hatton “to obtain the vote for women on the same terms as it is or may be granted to men. Its methods are those proper to writers–the use of the pen.”

Today we might say “the use of the blog,” but the message still rings true !

All postcards are from David Dismore’s personal collection.

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David Dismore is a television news archivist and feminist history researcher for the Feminist Majority Foundation.  As a teenager he was inspired by a photo and a few paragraphs about the suffragists in his high school history textbook in Greenville, Ohio.  The post below, originally published at Ms. magazine, looks at some of the propaganda that helped earn U.S. women the vote. You can read more from David at Feminism 101.

If you would like to write a post for Sociological Images, please see our Guidelines for Guest Bloggers.

O.S. sent in this neat video found at Flowing Data that illustrates the spread of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores across the U.S. since the early 1960s:

Yes, but not, perhaps, as non-religious as you might think.

A study just published in Sociology of Religion, by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, reported that about 3/4ths of professors report some belief in God or a higher power.  About 35% of professors are absolutely certain that God exists, while 21% believe, but are not absolutely sure.

Only 10% of professors are athiests and another 13 percent are agnostic.

So, is 23 percent many or only a few non-believers?

On the one hand, it may seem like very few if you consider that the professoriate is routinely characterized as radically liberal and anti-religious.  As Shannon Golden at Contexts Crawler says:

Devout parents often worry about the “secularizing” effects of sending their children off to college. They envision professors pushing secular thoughts and anti-religious values on their impressionable students.

Despite the stereotype, this data suggests that the majority of professors would welcome religious belief in their classrooms.

On the other hand, it may seem like a lot of athiests and agnostics if you compare the numbers to the general U.S. population.  According to the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, only 4% of the U.S. population is athiest or agnostic (see the data waaaay down at the bottom there):

From this perspective, 23% is a lot.

So what do you think?  Are you surprised by how few professors report being athiests or agnostics?  Or are you surprised by how many?

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Dmitriy T.M., Jody, and Emily F. sent in a new public service announcement aimed at preventing teen pregnancy. It features Sarah Palin’s daughter, and teen mom, Bristol Palin.

Transcript:

What if I didn’t come from a famous family?
What if I didn’t have all their support?
What if I couldn’t finish my education?
What if I didn’t have all these opportunities?

Believe me, it wouldn’t be pretty.
Pause… before you play.

The ad is fantastic in its raw truth. But not, perhaps, in the way it is intended to be. While the ad is, I think, trying to tell all teenagers (not just non-rich ones) to “pause,” it also clearly lays out who pays the highest price for early motherhood.  Privileged teenagers (who are, by the way, more likely to abort than disadvantaged ones) will often be provided resources that mediate the negative consequences of keeping their child.  In contrast, when disadvantaged teenagers become mothers, it tends to entrench their disadvantage.

So thanks, Palins, for reminding us how nice it is to be rich.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Coincidence?  Or based on stereotypes about women and, especially, PMS?

From Dr. Grumpy, sent in by Dan S.  Also from Dr. Grumpy, the shaming vending machine.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.