A thing many people don’t understand about American political discourse is that much of our anti-tax extremism is not really to do with taxes but rather a reaction to the Civil Rights movement. Overt racial animus became untenable in the 1970s so politicians looking to agitate white suburban voters began to use “Taxpayers” as a synonym for white people and “Wellfare recipients” to mean non-white people. From this perspective, the anti-tax agenda can be understood more as a white supremacist project than any objection to the concept of taxation. It’s about who gets what, not really about the how.