If looks were daggers, Rep. Jeff Thompson would have left last December’s State Legislative Breakfast with slash marks. Thompson is the oldest of the four legislators who attended, and after introducing himself, he launched into comments about property taxes and 2024’s Senate Bill 1 as if he were shadowboxing mayors and county council persons. You couldn’t say his comments were a clear explanation or defense of the bill he authored, so much as a rebuttal to what he must have been hearing about the looming fiscal crises it’s creating for communities like ours.
But that’s not what many citizens in attendance that snowy morning came to discuss. They wanted to talk about government’s role in people’s ability to work.
“I’m here to just bring some attention to what’s happening in the early childhood education space,” said Kelly Taylor, who then outlined the gutting of childcare funding for vouchers and support services. When one legislator asked, “Where’s the church and childcare? Where’s business and childcare? Where is government?” multiple citizens noted that several church-run childcares had shuttered as a result and the gains that local government and business had created together were effectively nullified with those closures.
As Thompson gave his spiel on taxation, he said, “the citizens voted for limited government.” Meanwhile, locals were insinuating that the government has a legitimate role to play in quality of life and economic opportunity issues for households. That exchange, and how it’s been framed for 250 years, is at the heart of the Well-Read Citizen’s June book selection, “The Price of Democracy” by Senior Fellow Vanessa Williamson of the Brookings Institution.
Many of us learned in school that American history begins with a tax revolt: the Boston Tea Party, when patriots hurled chests of tea into the harbor to protest “taxation without representation.” But as Williamson notes, the Tea Act of 1773 was actually designed to help a powerful corporation, the East India Company, by giving it a tax break, while colonial merchants feared being undercut. Our founding tax story is, in fact, a story about taxation WITH representation — and no breaks to corporations that are determined to be too big to fail.
The question, then and now, remains: what role does taxation (and allocation of public funds) play in citizens’ engagement in self-governance?
In “The Price of Democracy,” Williamson compiles a robust history of taxation, showing that citizens have not always treated taxes as tyranny. What Americans wanted was a fair taxation system that provided a better way to support economic opportunity across the entire population, rather than a consolidation of wealth for an elite few.
Rather than being a sign of submission to government, paying taxes is an act of patriotism, a way for ordinary Americans to claim power in a democracy and insist that the system work for everyone, not just the wealthy few. In Williamson’s extensive narrative of the US’s tax history, we see that patriotic taxpayers have repeatedly used that power to widen the circle of “We the People” and to demand public systems that allow all of us to thrive.
THE STORY WE WEREN'T TOLD
When Williamson looks across U.S. history, she finds that taxes have become truly controversial not whenever government raises revenue, but when the “scope of the public” is up for debate — when we fight over who belongs in “We the People,” who counts as a full citizen, and whose needs public money should serve.
Again and again, poorer and excluded Americans have agitated for broad-based taxation to fund schools, infrastructure, and social insurance that make real citizenship possible, while wealthy interests have mobilized to narrow the tax base and constrain democracy. Even Milton Friedman, who wanted to free markets to serve shareholders, acknowledged that some sectors should be given freedom from profit-driven and free to serve the greater good. The question for citizens is:
Do we want healthcare to render shareholders wealthier?
Or offer healthcare because every person has inherent value?
Do we want tuition-based education to profit corporations?
Or do we want free education for all to build innovation and opportunity?
Do we want families to be able to decide how to earn enough to cover their household costs — one earner or two — while raising children?
THE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT
The Constitution sketches the minimum duties of the federal government—regulating commerce, providing for the common defense, maintaining a functioning union. But as Danny Werfel, now IRS Commissioner, recently pointed put out in a discussion with Williamson, the government role most of us actually live with shows up in far more ordinary places: “the trash needs to be picked up on Thursday,” airplanes must not “crash into each other,” food must be “safe from food-borne illnesses,” and “the potholes need to be refilled”— and none of that “comes free.”
If you talk to middle- and lower-income families, you hear a similar definition of what government is for: safe streets, reliable schools, clean water, affordable healthcare, and the chance to move from precarity to stability. Williamson’s research shows that most Americans already see paying taxes as a civic duty closely tied to these shared goals; they are not instinctively antitax. What they resent is not taxation itself, but systems that feel rigged — where wage earners see every paycheck clipped while billionaires and large corporations hire specialists to avoid contributing at comparable rates.
Williamson argues that “taxes are the public’s most powerful weapon in the fight for a real democracy,” because deciding who pays — and who benefits — determines who holds power.
PATRIOTISM AS SHARED INVESTMENT
If paying taxes is a key expression of citizenship, then fairness is not just a budget question — it is a democratic one. Williamson documents how, across the 250-year-plus history of America, wealthy elites have repeatedly fought to limit progressive taxation while simultaneously backing efforts to restrict voting and redraw districts in ways that dilute the political power of those who would prefer a more equal society. In this light, so‑called “tax revolts” are often, at bottom, political revolts against a democracy inclusive of the working-class and people of all backgrounds, who are fully included in “We the People.”
A system in which lower- and middle‑income taxpayers shoulder a disproportionate share of the load while the top 10 percent quietly detach themselves is corrosive to patriotism. When everyday taxpayers feel that those who have benefited most from our economic system contribute least, they reasonably ask whether the rules are written to serve the public or a narrow oligarchy. By contrast, a tax system in which the wealthy pay more because they have gained more from stable markets, educated workers, and modern infrastructure reflects the older American intuition that opportunity comes with obligation.
The patriotic task is two-fold. First, we should insist that everyone — including the wealthiest among us—pay a fair share, so that the benefits of American life are not financed disproportionately by those with the least cushion. Second, we should pair that commitment with robust civic participation: learning how our government works, voting in every election, and supporting the unglamorous but essential work of the many government agencies like the USDA, EPA, CDC, NIH, TSA, IRS, DOE, FEMA, NFS, NPS and more.
The League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, multi-issue organization encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase public understanding of major policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy. All men and women are invited to join the LWV where hands-on work to safeguard democracy leads to civic improvement. For information, visit the website www.lwvmontcoin.org or the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, IN Facebook page.
