We argue endlessly about whether to be taxed. We should be arguing about how to spend well and collect honestly.
Most people dislike taxes, and it is not hard to understand why. Taxes feel like money we have given away, money we worked hard to earn and would rather keep for the things that make life better and more comfortable, our homes and what we put in them, our clothing, our food, our vacations, and our small pleasures from A to Z. Some of us feel that, without taxes, we could work a little less and still have everything we want. That instinct is human, and it deserves an honest hearing.
Yet the very same people want, and quietly depend on, the things that taxes make possible. We want roads, bridges, and tunnels. We want buses and trains that get us where we are going, and that make possible what would otherwise be out of reach. We want heat, light, and power, clean water, and clean air. Somehow, though, we rarely think of these vast systems, systems that serve an entire country, as being as personal to us as a dinner out, a week at the beach, or a new shirt. They are.
We think even less often about the things that protect us when life turns hard. We want good health care, and the decades of research that make it possible. We want the assurance that Medicare and Social Security provide, a floor beneath us in our later years. That floor matters more than most of us admit. Roughly half of American adults have no retirement savings of their own, according to the Federal Reserve. For a large share of our neighbors, these programs are not a supplement, they are survival. Most of us do not want to see people dying in the streets from hunger or illness simply because they worked hard, grew old, and could no longer provide for themselves. And some of our fellow citizens, through no fault of their own, do not have the same capacities of body or mind that others may take for granted. A decent society does not leave them behind.
For all these reasons, and many more, a large, complex, and advanced society like ours cannot function without taxes. They are not a taking. They are the shared price of everything above, the foundation that makes our private comforts possible in the first place. Seen clearly, taxes are less a loss than an investment in the country that lets each of us build a life. We should see them that way far more than we do.
I may be projecting my own view onto others, but I have come to believe that what people truly resent is not taxation itself. It is the waste, fraud, and abuse that creep into any large enterprise, driven by the least admirable of human traits, greed and self-dealing chief among them. That is a real problem, and it deserves real attention. But it should be addressed the way serious problems always should be, carefully, with study and evidence, and with respect for the people and services affected, not with the blunt and chaotic cuts we saw from Musk and DOGE.
The other thing people rightly resent is the sense that the rules are not the same for everyone. Those who pay their fair share want to know that everyone else is paying theirs too. Today that is not the case. The wealthiest Americans can follow a well-worn path, sometimes called buy, borrow, die. They hold assets that rise in value, borrow against them to fund their lives without ever selling, and pay little or no tax on the gains. Then, at death, a provision called stepped-up basis erases those gains for tax purposes entirely, and the estate tax reaches only a sliver of the largest fortunes. In 2026 the federal estate tax exemption stands at 15 million dollars per person, and 30 million dollars for a married couple, a level made permanent by the 2025 tax law, leaving well under one percent of estates subject to it at all.
Fairness means closing that path. It means ensuring that gains are taxed at some point rather than passed on untouched, and that our estate rules do not quietly underwrite permanent dynasties of inherited wealth. None of this is punitive. It simply asks that those with the most contribute on the same honest terms we expect of a nurse, a teacher, or the owner of a small business.
If we could hold both truths at once, that taxes are the price of a shared and civilized life, and that the price must be paid fairly by all, we would argue less about whether to be taxed and far more productively about how to spend well and collect honestly. That would be a conversation worth having.
Related: Systematic Approach To Hiring, Onboarding, and Leading Advisor Teams
