Taxes are like eating your greens.

As a person, you know that, if you just eat fried food and drink beer all the time, you won’t last very long, and in fact your quality of life will go down. So you eat green vegetables and you exercise. But it’s hard to do! So you make yourself little rules and follow them. No beer on a weeknight. I will run three miles at least twice a week. And so on. It seems silly - why not just do the right things? But it turns out that we need the rules in order to do the right thing.

As a society, we know that, if we just buy yachts (or steaks, or cars, or TVs) all the time, things will fall apart. Roads will crumble, kids won’t get taught. There will be no nurses to look after us when we’re old. So we make laws and pay taxes to pay for these things. 10% on electronic goods. 25% on luxury yachts. And so on. It seems silly (to some people) - why not just let people spend their money on the right things?

But it turns out that we need the rules in order to do the right thing.

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