Tax Season

The quote "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society," (is attributed to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.As we enter the 2026 IRS filing season, you may be treated to the libertarian* propaganda that taxes are just government stealing.

In a representative democracy such as ours, the majority has authorized the imposition of taxes in order to pay for the services we enjoy (the military, roads and bridges, the legal system, etc). Of course, Republican borrow-and-spend policies have long ago outstripped the ability of taxes to pay for the government services that Republicans demand (military invasions of sovereign countries, ICE occupations of American cities, Trump golf excursions).

That said, we do have taxation with representation in the US, and a casual comparison reveals a general trend of high taxes/GDP ratio correlated with a high democracy score. So the data seem to support Holmes.

*Libertarianism is the apotheosis of solipsism, the political philosophy of middle school boys and arrested development 

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