I decided not to cheat on my taxes. Not because I was afraid I’d get caught – after all, the IRS’ budget has been flayed along with everybody else’s – but because paying taxes is a duty. A privilege. An honor.

It’s not in the least complicated: We pool our money, and use that money to promote the general welfare. Collectively, we provide each other with education, roads, military defense, fire and police departments, public health, sanitation, Medicare (for now), Medicaid (for now), Social Security (for now), libraries (for now), a complex financial system that assures the safety of our assets … the list goes on and on and on, and then it goes on some more. What a deal.

Go into a restaurant, for example. Order something. When the food arrives, do you just start eating?

Really? Without checking out the kitchen? What about the restaurant’s food-handling and refrigeration practices? How long has that “fresh” tilapia been back there, anyway? As for the grease trap, you could get down on your hands and knees to inspect it, but do you really know what to look for?

No. But a government official does.

Of course, we could go all libertarian, get the government off our backs and out of restaurants’ kitchens, and let the free market work its magic. If people start dropping dead from some joint’s chicken mole, well, word will eventually get out, diners will choose to dine elsewhere, and the place will go under. Maybe private inspection companies will spring up: Restaurants will contract with them to check out their premises, and receive in return a Seal of Approval. Of course, competition among these new, lean & mean outfits will be fierce, and inevitably some will offer to inspect with a wink and a nudge, so customers will have to keep up on which Seals of Approval to trust and which to avoid …

Or, we could just have public health inspectors do it for us. With our tax dollars.

So by cheating on your taxes, you’re cheating on us, your fellow citizens – dining at our (safe!) table, then making a dash for the door when the check arrives. Still, for all of that, I understand the temptation: If you report your income honestly, you’ll have less money. I can also understand why someone breaks into Aunt Rose’s house and steals her pearl necklace, what prompts a guy to knock over a liquor store, the visions that inspire embezzlement.

What I can’t get my mind around is why someone who is wealthy, I mean, capital-W Wealthy, would cheat on his taxes. It seems to me that in order fully to enjoy his riches, he’d want to live in a stable, modern, well-run, contentedsociety. One in which he could walk clean streets, could drive his Escalade anywhere without fear of brickbats (which I just looked up; a brickbat is a piece of brick, used as a weapon, usually thrown. I had only a vague idea – the “bat” part confused me, I think). Who wants to live his life behind gates, surrounded by bodyguards, in fear of the masses? Just pony up; the masses will be able to lead decent lives, and your sleep will be free of nightmares involving torches and pitchforks.

But all that is, admittedly, abstract. What’s more concrete is the threat of prison. Let me tell you, if I had a multi-multi-figure income, I’d sit down every year with my accountants (there’d be more than one: In this scenario I’m rich, I tell you, RICH!) and say, “I want you to make damned sure that I pay every cent I owe, because I already have more money than I know what to do with, I’m having a real, real good time spending it, and I don’t want to squander one day in court, let alone months or years behind bars – I much prefer windsurfing in New Zealand. Not only that, I don’t want to waste one microsecond worrying about it. Tell me what I owe, cut the check, and put it in front of me so I can sign and get on with whatever hedonistic pleasures I have lined up for the rest of the day.”

Yet so many of them do. Cheat. It’s beyond me. Maybe that’s the mindset that got them rich in the first place. Balzac suggested that “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime." That’s a stretch, of course. But you have to wonder how much of one.