this post was submitted on 11 May 2026
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Americans are also obsessed with the notion their taxes would benefit anyone but themselves.
I don't understand why no one can grasp the concept. If your taxes benefit you, and the homeless guy on the corner, that means you're getting more value from your taxes.
It's a cultural thing that's hard to even push back against. Like, I want people to be helped, I want nobody to have to go hungry or have to live on the streets or go broke from medical bills, regardless of how they live, and I know that taxes are the most effective way to do that, but still I find myself instinctively framing it as "taxes are the cheapest way for me to ensure I don't have to deal with a homeless person begging outside my apartment"
Also I think the idea that we're each personally entitled to approve of everything the government spends tax money on is a long game from the right to combat things like pushes for universal health care, government assistance of reproductive healthcare (I first saw this about abortion), and really any form of the government actually helping people instead of demanding charity make up the difference
I argued at length with an American who used to hang out in my friend group for a while. He couldn't stand the idea that his taxes would pay for anything other than his own problems. He called it "giving free handouts".
He'd repeatedly use arguments like "but if my taxes pay for healthcare, I'd be wasting my money on morbidly obese people who created their own problems".
He also loved status and exclusivity.
...and he also fails to note how miserable his life would be if not for taxes from others.
The guy is really well off. Works a desk job pushing finance papers for the American military. He believes his well paid job secures him from relying on anything at all.
I'm wondering if that could have ANY relation with oligarchs controlled medias repeating all day long how bad taxes are and how inefficient public anything is.
Edit: and adding this: conservatives (not MAGA, racists, etc. I mean genuine conservatives) are generally not against the idea of paying to help homeless, poors, etc. They are against the idea to defer that to the government. They want to make donations themselves. That boosts the ego, and that also allows them to cherry pick who deserves their help, and government is inefficient-blablabla. The irony of the logic is non-profit typically spend 20--40% of their budget on fund raising and administration. This is not a very efficient system from an economic standpoint. As for choosing who to help, they end up rewarding marketing skills rather than ranking who needs the most their help.
I think the problem arises when you pay a crapton on taxes, and then comes a billionaire that makes millions of profits and pays zero.
So then the average person gets angry about inequality but instead of demanding that everyone pay their share they think "who knows how many other cheaters are out there. If we can't hold them accountable, then I want to pay less too!".
Which of course is the wrong way to go about it but alas