“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said it nearly a century ago. And, “no one’s said it better since,” New Yorker staff writer and Harvard professor Jill Lepore reminds us. And, she says, “that, right there, is the problem.”
The persistence of anti-tax rhetoric is especially strange, Lepore points out, given that “ninety percent of Americans receive direct social or economic security benefits from the federal government.” Yet we find it easier to see what we pay than what we get. Beyond that, every single one of us relies on and takes advantage of the essential public structures and systems that taxes make possible.
It’s a failure not only of attention but also of communication: scarcely anybody reminds us what taxes actually do. And research shows that “Americans are only dimly aware of what government does.” Further, we tend not to connect taxes to budgets, nor budgets to the work of government that every individual, family, and business depends on.
It may seem daunting in light of all this, but the folks at Demos Center for the Public Sector believe we can—and should—begin to shift the national conversation about taxes by breaking bad messaging habits and adopting more effective ones.
Mainly, we should talk about what taxes support, uphold, and make possible, emphasizing the shared values that we protect by contributing to the common good. We should talk about taxes as our tools for getting things done, together.
To that end, are some good habits to adopt this tax season:
