New York: No Taxation Without Representation (Saturday 08/07/2017).

No Taxation Without Representation sulked the hastily scrawled graffiti on a hoarding near our hotel.

And New York has a proliferation of taxes. Our hotel bill managed to run to thirteen entries, only one of which actually related to the cost of sleeping in and we didn't even touch the mini-bar.

Unwisely, I took the graffiti's sentiment to heart when refusing to pay the state sales tax on my latte this morning. My barista gave me a solemn nod which I took to be a gesture of solidarity against the burning injustice of it all.

The Founding Fathers would surely have applauded my stand against the state's overweening tax collecting powers in return for which my visa waiver didn't even grant me the right to cast my ballot.

If only for the sake of sustaining the fatally over stretched metaphor, its a shame that I didn't (a) go to Boston and not New York and (b) order a tea and not a milky coffee. That way, I could have  extracted maximum historical resonance by donning a natty tricorn hat, not washing for a month and contemptuously pouring my hot beverage into the harbour as an act of politically motivated social disobedience.

How different things could have been if only the Starbucks on the corner of West 59th and 9th had run out of chestnut praline sprinkles before I arrived.

At first glance, the tax dodging/vote casting matrix seems somewhat muted nowadays but on closer inspection the sentiment is alive a well.

The USA ranks a lowly 28th of the 35 OECD countries in terms of voter turnout. On the first count (of representation), Don got a modest 62 million of the 236 million potential votes (26%) and Hillary received 2.86 million more but still lost.  On the second, a whole $500 billion in taxes goes uncollected annually and $2 trillion of undeclared income sloshes around in the bowels of the black economy.

On reflection, in a perverse way perhaps Trump is the right man to lead America precisely because he doesn't pay his taxes and he is not representative.

You can hear the Sons of Liberty giving a slightly queasy cheer to the Paradox in Chief.

After all, in a round about way, didn't they get exactly what they asked for?

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