One of the most mindboggling reactions to people who don’t have children is that they’re selfish. That the choice not to create a genetic replica of themselves makes someone a narcissist. And that we whorish crones with tumbleweeds in our wombs are somehow leeching up resources without giving back.

This is incorrect for any number of reasons — not the least of which is that my child-free-ness frees me up to do a lot of stuff in my community, including caring for other people’s children —but it’s also mathematically questionable. Because, while I don’t have children, I certainly do pay for things that benefit children and people with children. Unlike a child, I pay taxes and understand that that’s just kind of how it is to live among other people. It’s what we do.

Or, in theory, it’s what we should do. Any yet, one of the most heated responses to the plan to forgive a relatively small amount of student loan debt is one rooted in selfishness: That I shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s frivolous education.

Setting aside the fact that we all benefit greatly when people go to college (you do want there to be doctors and nurses, right? And you understand that a lot of them have to take out loans to make that happen?) and that the classic barbs about the uselessness of theater majors is lazy and also just incorrect (did you see Hamilton, bro? Because everyone else did and it’s a huge business), the biggest question, to my mind, is…why not? Why wouldn’t you pay a very, very small amount of your tax money — money that’s already kind of a black box anyway —to help address one facet of a system that just plain sucks?

Isn’t that — paying for other people and having other people pay for you — the very fabric of a society?

My taxes fund many, many programs that I’ll never make use of. I pay for roads in parts of the city that I’ll never drive. I pay into the collective funds which help benefit veterans who fought in wars that I ideologically disagree with. And we all help subsidize a food industry in spite of having different tastes and values when it comes to eating. I don’t eat meat, but that doesn’t mean my taxes don’t help cattle ranchers. People on keto diets pay for grain subsidies. And — even though people in Portland seem think we have already defunded the police—we all pay for police officers even if we never call them, don’t support our local sports teams who all utilize police overtime. Yes, we pay for them even when they’ve all caught the blue flu.

See? We don’t get to pick where our tax money goes. And when we do, most of us still vote to pay more in order to help our community.

I’ve voted to tax myself a universal pre-k program that would help offset the cost of early education and help educators get the various certification and supports that they need. I rallied voters on behalf of a groundbreaking science-based early-learning program. As I think about it, I don’t think that I’ve ever voted down any education levy ever presented to me.

And I’m a pretty consistent voter because I live in a vote-by-mail state and they just mail me the ballot. Which is also something my tax dollars pay for.

I understand this system because when I was a kid, your tax dollars helped pay for my meals (free and reduced lunch at school, WIC, local food subsidies) and for my dad to go to work and support us (he was a deputy sheriff). We were deeply working class and benefited from all kinds of services, even though my dad had a “good” job, my mom stayed home with us, and neither of them had student debt. My parents should have been doing great, according to the American Dream, but even with a nuclear family and a home that we (just barely) owned, I still had to buy groceries with change on more than one occasion. Because that’s just the way this shit goes — you can do everything right and still need help.

Anyone who thinks that they haven’t benefited from this economic web of connection is not looking closely enough at their daily activities. Taxes are the reason that every road between here and Target isn’t a toll road. It’s why you’re able to park your personal vehicle in some places without paying to do so. It’s why you didn’t get a bill if you called the fire department because your house was engulfed in flames.

We all pay for things —schools in other parts of town, sidewalk maintenance to streets we didn’t know existed, salaries for lawmakers we didn’t vote for —that we won’t actually make use of. But that’s how we get the things we do make use of. It’s how we get the parks where we go and the running trails that we use and the public bathrooms in those parks and trails.

Sure, I make a specific decision to dramatically increase my lifetime carbon footprint and because I want to contribute as much as possible to my community. Sure, my tax dollars pay for public schools full of children I’ll never meet and probably wouldn’t like much. Sure, I paid off my own student debt and it was absolutely abysmal and I’d never want anyone to go through that. But I’m the selfish one, right?