Low Taxes, Vinyl Siding, and Suburban Sprawl

by Erik Lindberg Low Taxes Although I listen to him no more often than is necessary to stay reasonably informed, I cannot count the number of times that George Bush (the current one) has declared that “the ‘Merican people know better than anyone else how to spend their own money.” Although this is often little more than an appeal to the lowest common denominator--the Consumer--he says this in the context of a simplistic anti-big government, low taxation, anti-regulatory, laisse-faire ideology. His point, or rather the appeal, is that them boys in Washington with all of them fancy welfare programs are out of touch with the reality of us hard-workin’ folks in the heartland. Put less coloquially and more sympathetically, it is part of the conservative view that favors individual rather than collective thinking, that values liberty before equality, and that seems to believe, therefore, that policy should be as local as possible–-the household as the locus of policy decisions as an extreme version of the “States’ rights” ideology.

Erik Lindberg holds a Ph.D. in English literature from UW-Milwaukee and is a member of Community Builders Group. CBG is a partnership of three highly educated craftsmen whose business card carries the tag line, "Thoughtful Craftsmen."

Regardless of what one thinks of this ideology or political philosophy, this notion that Americans know best how to spend their own money–-at least as it is employed by our President and his party--will not hold up well under even a little scrutiny. One could of course point to the common, almost cliched notion that we live in a culture based on immediate gratification, novelty of experience and possession, and an endless series of gadgets (AKA “technological advancements”) that now seem to represent the American dream. When those who want to "steal" via taxation are said to be out of touch with the reality of the common folk, it may in fact not be reality but only the materialistic dreams and acquisitional fantasies of American culture. What, after all, is one going to do with the several hundred, perhaps a thousand, dollars that all but the very rich can expect out of Bush’s proposed tax cuts? It seems more likely to be spent on a DVD player or a flat-screen TV than to be invested, say, in research for alternative energy sources.

But this line of argument is more controversial than necessary in order to refute the notion that Americans know best how to spend their own money. Indeed, one could talk about the very real way in which Americans seem to be investing in retirement plans, the stock market, etc. Whether or not such far-sighted prudence is indeed on the rise in America, the cultural cache that is attributed to financial planning has significance that should not be overlooked. And the unfortunate fact that all our prosperity may in fact depend upon the sort of consumer values and activity spurred on by DVD players and faster computers is not lost on me. The supply-side economist is not fully wrong when he claims that the cure for economic woes is increased consumer spending, nor is he wrong that a token tax cut can indeed help stimulate consumer spending.

What I would argue, instead, is that there is a kind of spending, a crucial sort of spending, that citizens cannot participate in without the government’s help and therefore without a level of taxation much higher than that with which we have become accustomed. Thus, I say to George Bush, it is not so much that Americans don’t know how to spend their own money, there are ways in which we can’t spend our own money: namely, broad-based policies that foster shared community values, but whose economic gain, if there is anything that tangible, cannot be accurately or reliably accounted for.

Take, for instance, the money that we all invest in our roads, and that we would perhaps invest more in should we think things through both clearly and in a long-sighted way. While I am only speculating for the sake of argument, and my accounting could be off in this particular instance without my general point being wrong. It is plausible, at least, that anything we spend on road improvements in our communities would be returned to us in a variety of ways. In a world free of potholes, we would certainly save on auto maintanence, and it may be the case that the extra few dollars in taxes would cost less than the extra amount we otherwise invest in tires and alignment. Less tangible, however, are the general civic values, the good reputation and communal pride that lead, for instance, to increased tourism. A ride through Detroit certainly makes this case in the negative; any money spent there on simple upkeep certainly would have paid for itself by avoiding the morass that city has found itself in.

But no one individual can make such civic improvements by him or herself: even an extremely wealthy person would not acheive adequate return on investing in basic infrastructure in order to help his or her large, tourist-based hotel. It is difficult, if not impossible, for private associations to successfully invest in such improvements. At the most, we see them successfully lobbying the government to spend part of its revenue on improvements that would give them financial returns. One can see this clearly with insurance companies, who have indeed made our society safer in order to make themselves more money. Likewise, the chamber of commerce, or convention bureau of tourist-dependent areas certainly are able to successfully lobby for civic improvements and investments. Although progress is painfully slow, partly I would argue because our collective fear of socialized health-care, what progress there has been has come when the expense of the cure becomes prohibitive to the point where there is an outcry to invest in prevention. The most well-received arguments for universal health care and coverage are those that show how much we all pay for the masses of uninsured people in our rising private costs and expenses.

But even in these cases, where a group of people are able to see the long-term payoff of short-term investment, they generally count on the government to organize and implement these plans. Rarely are such projects committed without government involvement or subsidies, as the rash of new private stadiums, built largely with public money, would suggest. But there are perhaps even more public and civic goods, goods that few would disagree with, whose balance sheets are virtually impossible to settle. Take, for instance, the issue of air quality. Public health analysts could certainly speculate on the economic cost of decreasing air quality. With their eyes on a bottom-line, it is hard to imagine a group of private investors to investing in filters for the local factory, knowing, for instance, that they will have to pay less of their total income for health-insurance 40 years from now. It is even less plausible to suppose that I can spend my $600 tax rebate on such filters, even if I get together with 100 of my neighbors. Nor could I reasonably expect to spend that same small rebate on long-term alternatives to fossil fuels. It would be easy, however, for the government to take a fraction of that money from everyone or even, dare I say, raise our taxes a few dollars, and successfully clean the air in a number of ways. Only a body that can represent everyone’s needs can successfully distribute both the short term costs and the long term benefits of something like a clean and renewable environment.

It is not that clean air and water, urban renewal, lower crime and incarceration rates, disease prevention, public transportation, education, even the arts don’t have an economic cost and an economic return. Given the size and scale of our national community, the only reasonable way for their cost and their return to be spread sufficiently and fairly, is for us to submit ourselves to a social contract that gives a centralized authority the power and the vision to make decisions about how to achieve and maintain as many common values as possible. No one really argues with this very basic statement of political philosophy, and very few among us suggest abolishing taxation or the government. Rather it is an argument about degrees. When George Bush tells us we know better than the government how to spend our own money, what he means is this: that we need more freedom to purchase whatever it is we want or desire, regardless of whether they hurt or help others, and that we need less public investment in things that may not appeal to our immediate sense of want and desire--that, in short, we need less investment in quality housing, clean and safe cities, freedom from harmful chemicals, and so on. In contrast, I would argue that we have enough consumer goods and experiences but need, instead, the sorts of things that we can never, ever purchase on our own, without the mandatory investment that only a government can secure.

Vinyl Siding

To the homeowner, vinyl siding is a dream. Consider the advantages of maintenance-free siding, as well as the low cost when compared to new cedar clapboard. Older houses that have not been vigilantly taken care of, will, at some point, require thousands of dollars (sometimes as much as $40,000 - $50,000) to get the original siding, fascias, soffits, window frames, etc., ready to take a coat of paint. And even after this, they will need to be repainted again in, perhaps, as soon as 10 years. It is far less expensive to cover the questionable wood with vinyl siding and aluminum trim. Or, if the wood contains active rot, it is still much less expensive simply to remove it prior to installing new vinyl and aluminum.

Although it is perhaps becoming less popular in the suburbs, at least in the suburban sprawl around Milwaukee, with its new developments and tracts aspiring to a certain “classiness” with their bylaws that forbid vinyl siding and require a certain percentage of the house instead to have a schlocky brick veneer, vinyl siding has traditionally been apace with the general appeal of a new house in the suburbs. Here, unlike not only the old house in the city, but the city itself, things appear to be more maintenance free, tidy, clean, crisp around the edges.

And vinyl siding itself could be described in this way. It does have a crisp, tidy look. It is uniform in color and texture, without the dings, cracks, and chips that one will have in wood. Aluminum trim, moreover, will not warp, bleed through the paint. From the street, I have to admit, it can mimic the original clapboard. The first clue to its real nature is in fact its clean uniformity.

Unlike bothersome wood, moreover, which must be carefully cut so that the joints butt each other with extreme accuracy, a fraction of an inch resulting in an unsightly gap, vinyl siding practically snaps together, overlapping at the corners, windows, and seams in such a way as to forgive all but the most inaccurate cutting. As such, it takes very few tools and very little experience to install. That more people don’t install their own siding can be explained largely by the heights that many would find daunting. What the professional brings to siding is, for the most part, speed and efficiency. Siders are not valued for their craft but for the square feet per hour they can produce.

All snobishness aside, vinyl siding will do terrible damage to a house, old or new and, when the economics are carefully examined, it is not, ultimately, a cost-effective way of maintaining a house, even if doesn't rot houses from the inside out. Part of the problem is that it is difficult, if not impossible to install vinyl siding in a fully waterproof manner. Because it is in the end just plastic, run in very long stretches, it invariably expands and contracts in such a way that makes effective caulking impossible. I cannot count all the houses, moreover, that have exposed edges and corners that, in addition to their “aesthetic” function of trimming off the miscut ends of the siding pieces, function as water-catchers. While in some cases this is a function of the design of the siding, in more cases it is the result of the narrow scope of the sider’s responsibility. They are there to slap up the plastic, not to think through complicated issues of flashing. To do so would often require them to have skills and tools that are not generally part of the trade.

At any rate, vinyl siding will only half-heartedly keep the water out. What it does do well, however, is trap moisture generated inside the house. One of the beautiful features of wood is the way it breathes. A house whose paint is constantly peeling, moreover, is telling you something about an insulation and ventilation problem that can often be easily fixed. Vinyl siding, in contrast, traps moisture inside the walls. As Bob Yapp, host of PBS’s About Your House, and a true expert in restoration and rennovation, explains, “the result [of vinyl siding] is an accumulation of moisture that will condensate and, over time, collect at the sill plate, which rests on the foundation and holds the vertical wall studs. Ultimately, this will render your insulation ineffective and create a haven for termites and other pests. The combination of rot and infestation can lead to significant, if not irreversible, structural damage” (About Your House 52).

Economically, then, vinyl siding is a good companion to low taxes: it is a penny-wise pound-foolish approach. And, although it may create problems down the road, it keeps one individual homeowner from having to provide the $50,000 restoration, whose benefit may ultimately serve a future homeowner. But, we should still be clear that vinyl siding is not, in the long view, a worthy option. As Yapp concludes, “once you discover what replacement siding can do to your walls, you’ll agree that terms like ‘permanent’ and ‘maintenance-free’ associated with vinyl and aluminum siding are, at best, misnomers (at worst, they’re false advertising)” (52). Just like many of the policies that result from low taxation, vinyl siding does postpone the problem for a number of years. The problem may ultimately be bigger, but for now we’ve avoided an expensive mess.

Suburban Sprawl

Sociologists have long noted the way in which suburbs reflect the historical core of American individualism. Our heroes, myths, and national narratives, even our tax code, suppose an endless amount of land available to the courageous pioneer willing to endure hardship in order to make it his own. These supreme individualists, for whom the city represents suffocating crowds, find themselves in stark contrast with Europeans, for example, who favor the center of the city, rather than the suburbs and who willingly sacrifice their claim on large bits of private space in favor of pleasant public spaces.

Not only in its status in American society, but in its very architecture and landscaping, the modern single-family detached suburban home with a large yard is the modern incantation of our intractable frontier ethos. While the only hardship endured en route to the suburban home are the hours of frustrating commuting, the suburban home remains the consummate symbol of the American dream and its overwhelming emphasis on privacy and land-ownership.

The very briefest semiology of suburban architecture will note the prominence of fences and the disappearance of the front porch from American architecture (replaced, in the suburbs, by the private rear patio or deck) as a reflection of American beliefs on how space should be used. Architectural semiology will, in addition to examining how public and private spaces are defined, talk of transitional or semi-public space. In older cities, the front porch and sidewalk provide these fluid transitions. The front porch is both inside and on one’s property, but within plain view of one’s neighbors. Entering another’s porch is less obtrusive or invasive then entering their house and need not be done without invitation. In the suburban home, the back yard has this prominence, but operates much more like the inside of a house in terms of its unwritten rules of privacy and invitation.

Even more striking a symbol of the uniquely American will to demarcate clearly between “mine” and “thine” (with hardly any “ours”) is the disappearance of sidewalks in many suburbs. Like the front porch, though more public, sidewalks act as a transitional space, inviting people to move slowly past each others’ houses. Without sidewalks, one can stroll through the suburban neighborhood either by walking in the street (one of the residential suburb’s few truly public spaces), which is not meant for walking, or by trespassing on one’s neighbor’s private homestead. Such perambulation is not encouraged, and the modern suburbanite is expected to get his or her exercise at the private health-club. The semiotic meaning of the sidewalk-less suburb suggests that we should move past each others’ homesteads as quickly as possible, preferably parking and stepping behind closed doors. The purpose of the street is entirely utilitarian: to get private homeowners directly to their own homes. The social/ideological purpose is to eschew connection with an urban environment, aspiring, instead, to the rural or frontier setting. It is part of the symbolism of house as homestead.

Conceived this way, the suburbs have a mutually reinforcing relationship with the tax “policy” of George Bush that intends to return to the citizen his and her own money. It is the lure that one can buy oneself out of collective, social problems that swings the American balance so far toward private gratification and so far away from public, social, and collective investment. Indeed the refusal of Americans to invest in beautiful, liveable cities makes sense largely to the extent to which we can escape to the suburbs. And given the escape of affluence from the inner-city, and given the social momentum it has started and maintained, the Bush tax ethos cannot help but make sense: while I can’t take my tax rebate and clean the air in Milwaukee, help lower the crime rate, improve its schools–-at least not by myself. I can--indeed many feel they ‘must’--buy a house in Waukesha County (perhaps even one with vinyl siding). Here, the schools are better if not good, the air is cleaner, the roads newer and less congested (for now), and, perhaps most importantly, our collective depletion of our natural resources and poisoning of the planet, in addition to in-your-face social inequality, can–-here in the suburbs–-be pushed out of sight and out of mind.

Seen in this context, it is no accident that suburban sub-developments have the sorts of names they do. The naming itself is a significant symbolic act of self-partitioning, but the names almost always are bucolic, pastoral, and nostalgic. If they do not carry a historic-patriotic motif, usually harkening back to our Colonial or early Federal periods, they suggest how this area might have been had it not been desecrated by suburban sprawl (Cedar Trails, Stony Brook Manner, Sunny Meadow Acres, etc.,...) Sometimes this name becomes a motif that repeats itself throughout the development, encompassing street names, architectural restrictions, even the decor at the artificial pond.

It is here that the suburban development is most closely wed to vinyl siding, whether or not vinyl siding is employed (and increasingly, it is not, the new trend being towards concrete fiber board or, the real wood siding upgrade). In a way we do not see in either the city or in older homes, both the suburbs and vinyl siding work overtime to conceal their true nature. In a profound sense they are not what they appear to be. Despite its artificial wood-grain, fake corner “boards” and trim pieces, it is not wood, it is plastic trying to remind us of wood. In a similar way, the suburbs are not bucolic frontier homesteads nor federal manors. No matter how big the lawns, they are not part of our rural past, but are part of an urban present.

Earlier I suggested that vinyl siding is a godsend for the homeowner. In addition to its apparent lack of expense and freedom from maintenance, it is also a dream, a fantasy and an illusion used to mask its petroleum-based origins. So too with the suburb, which urges us to forget our collective interconnectedness, the cities from which they are spun, the shortsited pleasures they provide at the expense of the long term health of the urban structure. This of course runs much deeper than a mere tax code, but the tax code, the suburb and vinyl siding are all threads in the same cloth that constitutes our culture. But as long as our government tells us over and over again that our earnings are to be spent more on ourselves and less on our collective needs, there is little hope for change. The result of our freedom to do with our money what we think best is vinyl siding and the suburbs. We have gotten what we collectively deserve.