My issue anymore is not with paying taxes, it’s how disproportionately they are applied across income brackets. In IL, we have some of the highest property taxes in the States, yet our schools are still needing to cut back on music and art programs I grew up experiencing because they don’t have enough funding and test scores didn’t care if you can play the cello. The roads and their platforms of potholes are a minefield, public places are rusting and falling apart, and we’re being told that there’s just no money and that austerity is the only way to make anything work, now.

No, austerity is not the only way if the rich paid their taxes. Righting this ship, this far after Reagan gutted most social safety nets and hamstrung a lot of programs aimed at helping anyone but the rich, is going to be extremely difficult until the geriatric boomers, who refuse to leave positions of power, left or are removed. Until (and if it’s even possible now) we get back to that level of taxation of wealth, we will never have the life they tell us we get to live nor the world we want to raise a family in.