Would you please just raise my taxes?

It's fundraising season again at schools across America (I think it's always fundraising season, to tell the truth). My seven year old spent a couple hours yesterday evening going door-to-door selling Wolfgang candy to raise money for field trips. Let me count the ways that this is wrong, wrong, wrong:

1. My neighbors are guilted into buying overpriced candy bars because this cute seven year old is standing on their porch, beaming.

2. Fabulous prizes are dangled before my boy - an IPod, a remote controlled Hummer, etc. - but they require superhuman effort to achieve. He'd have to sell 100 orders of chocolates to have his name put in a raffle to get those prizes. But he doesn't understand this, until we count up the orders he's gotten and find out that he's won himself one candy bar, not an IPod. He explodes in a horrendous temper tantrum born of disappointment.

3. If I want him to get his chance at fabulous prizes I must take these candies to my place of employment and inflict them on my coworkers. And they inflict me with similar offers on behalf of their kids. Any lesson this is supposed to teach my child - the value of hard work, etc. - goes down the toilet, because Mom and Dad are doing all the selling for him.

4. Since I refuse to participate in this way, my boy is left with the following lesson: Corporate America will tease you with dreams of luxury, then proceed to exploit you for all you're worth, leaving you bereft with nothing to show for your efforts. Capitalism Sux.

I plan to show up to the next meeting of the PTO and ask them to please, PLEASE not do anymore of these godawful fundraisers. Field trips are a wonderful thing for kids to have. So add the cost to my tax bill for chrissake. If you can't bear to do that, just ask me for money; I'll be glad to kick in $50, $100, whatever it takes to not have to deal with this crap anymore.

By the way, I'm selling frozen pizzas to raise money to hire an adjunct for next semester. Please stop by the Economics Department offices to fill out an order form.