The Great American Tax Revolt

Summary

Podcast Summary: Today, Explained – The Great American Tax Revolt

Date: April 14, 2026
Hosts: Noel King, Sean Rameswaram (not present in transcript)
Guests: Eric Levitz (Vox), Isaac Martin (UC San Diego)

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Overview

This episode tackles the growing discontent among Americans around paying taxes, with a special focus on current polling, partisan dynamics, and historical comparison to the late-1970s “tax revolts.” The hosts investigate what’s driving today’s anti-tax sentiment, how politicians are responding, the implications for government services, and revisit the infamous California Proposition 13 as a cautionary tale.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Nation Increasingly Hostile to Taxes

[02:07-03:42]

• Surge in Tax Discontent: After the pandemic, Gallup polls track a sharp rise in Americans believing their taxes are “too high” — from 46% in 2020 to 59% in 2025.
• Disconnect with Reality: Eric Levitz highlights that actual tax rates are very low historically, but public anger has climbed regardless.
  • "Americans are about as upset with their tax burden as in modern history. And yet...the actual amount of taxes...are the lowest in modern history or just about." (Eric Levitz, [03:11])
• Anecdotal Frustrations: Callers and social media users share stories of being overwhelmed by tax bills, often with little clarity on how their money is spent.
  • "What, where does my money go? Why don't I have a say, like Social Security? Why can't I opt out for that?" ([03:05])

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2. Not Just a “Red” Revolt – Bipartisan Grumpiness

[03:42-04:22]

• Both Sides Grumpy: Republicans are traditionally more anti-tax, but Democrats, too, are trending in that direction.
  • "Both coalitions are trending in the same direction. Democrats aren't quite as far along ...but they're both moving towards more hostility." (Eric Levitz, [03:49])

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3. How States and Washington Are Responding

[04:22-07:43]

A) Red State Rebellions

[04:22-05:20]

• Property Tax Woes: GOP-led states like Texas, Idaho, Florida implement major property tax cuts. Some consider eliminating property taxes for non-school purposes altogether.
• Notable Quote:
  • "For being on your property, you got to write a check to the government every year." ([05:14], sponsor/archival clip)

B) Federal Tax Policy – The “Ratchet Effect”

[05:21-07:43]

• Recent Trump Tax Cuts: New bill extended earlier tax cuts, added “no tax on tips,” “no tax on Social Security,” and more breaks for various groups.
  • “Last year, the Trump administration...enacted a tax cut bill that costs well over $3 trillion...including the much ballyhooed no tax on tips, which Democrats have subsequently embraced as well.” (Eric Levitz, [06:02])
• Bipartisan Reluctance to Raise Taxes: Each party, once in power, preserves cuts except for the top earners, leading to a downward spiral in tax rates.
  • “There's this ratchet down...of what is considered...the normal bipartisan conventional wisdom about how much middle class Americans should pay in taxes.” (Eric Levitz, [07:21])

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4. Democratic Party: Big Promises, Small Appetite for Broad Taxes

[07:43-10:02]

• Democrats’ Contradiction: Want to grow the social safety net, but promise not to raise taxes on anyone but the rich.
  • “Democrats have kind of gotten more ambitious about...increasing government spending...But they're also increasingly terrified of calling for taxes on anybody but the rich.” (Eric Levitz, [07:58])
• Affluent Base Shifts Democratic Policy: The party is more invested in the upper middle class now than ever, moving the “no tax increase” income line up to $400,000 under Biden.
• Emerging ‘Resistance’ Tax Evasion: Some progressives now frame tax resistance as protest against Trump-era policies.
  • "Anyone who pays their taxes is funding Donald Trump's wars and ICE detention facilities." (Eric Levitz via new resistance movement, [09:15])

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5. Root Causes of the Tax Backlash

[10:19–11:41]

• Inflation and Property Taxes: Covid-era inflation drove up everyday costs and housing prices, translating into higher property taxes.
• Plummeting Political Trust: Both parties’ bases increasingly view the other as dangerous, and thus resent sending any money for the other’s priorities.
  • “If you think that one of your nation's major political parties...is morally abominable...you might not want to give them more of your paycheck.” (Eric Levitz, [10:57])

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6. Where Are We Headed? The Impending Collision

[11:41–13:30]

• Unsolvable Math: Both parties promise more services and less revenue, appeasing their current support bases but setting the country up for fiscal crisis.
  • “Democrats are really committed to expanding the social safety net...yet they have no appetite for broad based tax increases...Republicans want to cut taxes more and more and more.” (Eric Levitz,[12:09])
• Big Question: What will the parties actually prioritize as this contradiction becomes unsustainable?

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7. A Historical Warning: The 1970s Tax Revolt and Prop 13

[17:33-26:50] (Guest: Isaac Martin)

• 1970s Parallels: Isaac Martin contextualizes today’s mood with the property tax revolt that began in California and spread nationwide.
• Prop 13 Details:
  • Capped property tax at 1%
  • Capped assessment increases to 2% per year
  • Allowed intergenerational transfer of tax breaks
  • Started as a populist reaction to sudden, sharper assessments after modernization of tax administration
  • “Proposition 13 is a big deal for a few reasons. The first is that it really very dramatically changed the state's tax structure.” (Isaac Martin, [19:18])
• Consequences:
  • Major drop in local government revenues
  • Declining school funding and infrastructure
  • Increased fiscal volatility (boom and bust cycles)
  • Created unfairness: new buyers in the same neighborhood might pay vastly higher taxes
  • “You could want your government for free, but you can't get it for free.” (Isaac Martin, [27:02])
• How It Happened: Grassroots anger + charismatic, persistent activists (notably Howard Jarvis), plus a simple pitch: lower your property taxes by signing.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [03:11] “Americans are about as upset with their tax burden as in modern history. And yet...the actual amount of taxes...are the lowest in modern history or just about.” – Eric Levitz
• [03:49] “Both coalitions are trending in the same direction. Democrats aren’t quite as far along as Republicans are, but they’re both moving towards more hostility towards taxes.” – Eric Levitz
• [05:14] “Is it your property or not? Just for being on your property, you gotta write a check to the government every year.” – Sponsor/archival (used as political rhetoric)
• [07:21] “There's this ratchet down over the 21st century where what is considered...the normal bipartisan conventional wisdom about how much middle class Americans should pay in taxes keeps going down.” – Eric Levitz
• [09:15] “Anyone who pays their taxes is funding Donald Trump's wars and ICE detention facilities and that we all therefore have a civic responsibility to cheat the IRS.” – Paraphrased by Eric Levitz, describing resistance influencers
• [10:57] “If you think that one of your nation's major political parties...is morally abominable and is going to do absolutely outrageous things with the government funds...then you might not want to give them more of your paycheck.” – Eric Levitz
• [19:18] “Proposition 13 is a big deal for a few reasons. The first is that it really very dramatically changed the state's tax structure.” – Isaac Martin
• [27:02] “You can want your government for free but you can't get it for free. The lesson here is that we really value...a lot of the public services public goods that our governments provide.” – Isaac Martin
• [26:50] (On unfairness) “Now you might actually pay a lot more tax than somebody else in your neighborhood who again, has an identical home worth the same amount of money just because they bought their home earlier than you did.” – Isaac Martin

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Important Timestamps

• 02:07 – Eric Levitz introduces the rise in anti-tax sentiment
• 03:11 – Discontent is high despite historically low tax rates
• 04:22–05:20 – Red states' tax policies; property tax revolts
• 06:02–07:43 – The “ratchet effect” of federal tax policy
• 08:33 – Democrats’ reluctance to raise taxes on non-rich households
• 09:15 – Emergence of anti-Trump, anti-tax resistance rhetoric
• 11:41–13:30 – The parties’ clashing promises and coming fiscal reckoning
• 17:33 – Start of Prop 13 historical segment with Isaac Martin
• 19:18 – Detailed breakdown of Prop 13 effects
• 26:50–27:02 – Isaac Martin's major warnings and lessons

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Nationwide, Americans’ anti-tax mood is deepening, crossing party and generational lines, even as actual taxes remain comparatively low.
• Policymakers face an unsustainable contradiction: growing promises of services and ongoing tax cuts or caps.
• History warns of permanent consequences: California’s Prop 13 offers a vivid example of how “tax revolts” can erode the quality and fairness of public goods.
• The core question: Not “should I pay less tax?” but “what are we willing to give up if we do?”

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For further context, listen to the episode or check out Vox.com’s reporting on the American tax debate.

Transcript

[Unidentified Caller]

Hey, so we're not paying taxes this year, right?

[Isaac Martin]

Until the Pentagon passes one damn audit, we shouldn't pay any more taxes.

[Noel King]

People don't want to pay taxes anymore because they don't trust the way the government is spending and tracking our money. Americans are fed up with paying taxes and. I know, I know, but hear me out. Americans are extra fed up with paying taxes lately, according to some Gallup polling and some posting. But are we being short sighted?

[Eric Levitz]

I think that it's important to have a government. I think that humans tried anarchy for quite a long time and it didn't work so well. A lot of people got hit over the head with rocks. We didn't have a whole lot of economic development. Almost everyone agrees that the United States should have a military to protect it from foreign invasion, that we should have law enforcement, firefighting schools, etc.

[Noel King]

Anti taxers and where this could all be heading. Coming up on TODAY Explained.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

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[Megan Rapinoe]

megan Rapinoe here. This week on A Touch More. We're bringing you our live show in Phoenix with WNBA four time champion Chelsea Gray and the Naismith coach of the year, Shea Ralph. Together we talk about the NCAA semifinals, the crazy activity in the transfer portal, and of course the final matchup for the NCAA championship. Check out the latest episode of A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube.

[Isaac Martin]

This is TODAY Explained.

[Eric Levitz]

My name is Eric Levitz and I'm a senior correspondent for Vox where I write about politics and the economy.

[Noel King]

All right, so tomorrow is tax day and Americans are feeling some type of way about their taxes this year, huh?

[Eric Levitz]

Yeah, I would say that we as a country are in a pretty tax negative sort of mood. You know, Gallup has this long running survey data where they ask Americans, is the amount of money that you pay in taxes, federal taxes, too high about right or too low? And for a decent chunk of the 2000 and tens, a plurality of Americans said it was about right. But that changed right around the pandemic. You know, in 2020, the share of Americans who Said their tax burden was too high was 46%. By last year, that had jumped to 59%. And it's basically a continuous jump right after the pandemic.

[Isaac Martin]

I'm a 20 year old barber and I owe the IRS $30,000 in taxes this year.

[Noel King]

I need to come on here and ven taxes because I literally owe $3,400.

[Isaac Martin]

What, where does my money go? Why don't I have a say, like Social Security? Why can't I opt out for that?

[Eric Levitz]

And I think that what makes this, you know, really remarkable is that the Americans discontent is not tracking the objective level of federal taxes. So in 2025, Americans are about as upset with their tax burden as in modern history. And yet at the same time, the actual amount of taxes that they're paying, the rates that they're paying, are the lowest in modern history or just about.

[Noel King]

All right, so who is upset about taxes? Is this a red America revolt? Is this a blue America revolt?

[Eric Levitz]

Yeah. So I think that obviously the Republican Party is always more hostile to taxes and Republicans conservatives are going to express more aversion to them in polls. But what I think we've really seen and what's really significant is that both coalitions are trending in the same direction. Democrats aren't quite as far along as Republicans are, but they're both moving towards more hostility towards taxes.

[Noel King]

Very interesting. Okay, so let's discuss what Americans are doing about our hostility. Let's talk first about predominantly red states, Republican led states. What's going on?

[Eric Levitz]

Yeah. So since COVID we've basically seen red states wage war on property taxes.

[Isaac Martin]

Especially $18 billion in property tax relief is coming for Texas taxpayers. Up to the average reduction in property taxes for Idaho homeowners is approximately 18%.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Connie Werner is raking in the savings. As a homeowner whose primary residence is in North Dakota. Connie will get $500 back on her property taxes next year.

[Eric Levitz]

Now Republicans are really building on that. So, so, so this year in Florida, state legislators have advanced a constitutional amendment that would phase out all property taxes for non school purposes.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Is it your property or not? Just for being on your property, you got to write a check to the government every year.

[Noel King]

Hmm. Wow. All right. So that's at the state level. I wonder about what's happening at the national level. So we had the big beautiful bill. The Trump administration was clear that it hoped that, you know, come tax refund time, Americans, especially wealthy Americans, wealthier Americans, would be very happy with the results. Truth social.

[Isaac Martin]

So when you get your tax refund think about what a wonderful president you have. No tax on tips, no tax on Social Security for our great seniors, no tax on overtime. Don't spend all this money in one place.

[Noel King]

What's, what's been up from the White House.

[Eric Levitz]

Yeah. So like you said, last year, the Trump administration, along with Republicans in Congress, enacted a tax cut bill that costs well over $3 trillion. Much of that was extending the tax cuts that Trump had enacted during his first term in office. But he also created new tax breaks on top of those, including the much ballyhooed no tax on tips, which Democrats have subsequently embraced as well. And I think that that's really indicative of this larger pattern that's kind of defined American tax policy in the 21st century, which is a Republican president gets in. George W. Bush in the early 2000s, cuts taxes across the board.

[Isaac Martin]

We must give overcharged taxpayers some of their own money back.

[Eric Levitz]

Eventually, Democrats get back into power. They preserve the tax cuts on everybody

[Isaac Martin]

but the rich in exchange for a temporary extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. We're also able to protect key tax cuts for middle class families.

[Eric Levitz]

Another Republican comes in, and they cut everybody's taxes down even further, but especially for the rich.

[Isaac Martin]

We enacted the biggest tax cuts and reforms in American history.

[Eric Levitz]

And then Democrat comes in, preserves the new baseline that the Republicans have set for everybody but the wealthy. Come on, folks. And so there's this ratchet down over the 21st century where what is considered kind of the normal bipartisan conventional wisdom about how much middle class Americans should pay in taxes keeps going down.

[Noel King]

All right, so Democrats, as you point out, historically less hostile to taxes than Republicans and historically, like the kind of pro government policies that require people paying taxes. So what are Democrats up to?

[Eric Levitz]

Yeah, so, you know, historically, as you say, Democrats are the party of big government, quote, unquote. You know, there's been a really a contradictory sort of evolution within the party over the past couple decades where Democrats have kind of gotten more ambitious about what they want to do in terms of increasing government spending on social safety net programs. But they're also increasingly terrified of calling for taxes on anybody but the rich.

[Isaac Martin]

We impose surtaxes on people who make more than a million dollars a year, and billionaires. While we provide tax relief to hardworking Americans, no household in America should pay federal income tax on their first $75,000 of earnings.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Keep your money.

[Eric Levitz]

This is in part because the base of the Democratic Party has become increasingly affluent. In the Trump era, college educated voters shifted very strongly towards the Democratic Party. While non college educated voters shifted towards the Republicans. And so Democrats have never been more reliant on the upper middle class for votes than they are today. And that's led to things like under Obama, the Democratic Party's pledge was that it wouldn't raise taxes on anybody making less than $250,000 a year. But by the time Biden comes into office, that's 400,000. And so, yeah, there's also been in this particular moment in 2026, this other smaller but interesting development of the emergence of a kind of anti Trump, anti tax resistance movement, or at least some resistance influencers have started arguing that anyone who pays their taxes is funding Donald Trump's wars and ICE detention facilities and that we all therefore have a civic responsibility to cheat the irs.

[Noel King]

And I'm just really glad and thankful to not be participating in this sham of an American political system and internal revenue system, because the government is using my tax dollars to build concentration camps for my neighbors. And so I don't feel like giving them my tax money.

[Isaac Martin]

Tax strike 2026.

[Eric Levitz]

Spread the word.

[Noel King]

Hmm. All right. So everybody is finding a reason why they should not have to pay. What happened? Why are we all so irate?

[Eric Levitz]

You know, I think there are a few things. One post Covid inflation made people really sensitive to their costs. At the same time, also, the post Covid boom and the inflation led to an increase in property values. As the price level goes up, the value of homes go up, and that potentially increase people's property tax assessments and increase their nominal property taxes. But also, I guess as we kind of referenced with this resistance movement, to withhold your taxes in order to stick it to Trump, there's this declining trust in our government and especially declining trust in the other party. And so, you know, fundamentally, if you think that one of your nation's major political parties, which tends to be in power about half the time, is morally abominable and is going to do absolutely outrageous things with the government funds available to them, then you might not want to give them more of your paycheck.

[Noel King]

All right, so historically, in our part of the world, tax revolts are something to on occasion, take seriously. Right. 1773 Tea party in Boston, and then later on some other Tea Parties. So, so, so I'm inclined to take this seriously, that everybody's agitated about paying taxes and some states are saying, we're going to make you pay less. Where do you think all of this is going? How serious is this?

[Eric Levitz]

So I think we're on this real collision course where both of the major parties are going to need to confront the fact that they're, they have essentially taken a bunch of positions that do not mathematically work with each other, that Democrats are really committed to expanding the social safety net dramatically and yet they have no appetite for broad based tax increases and in fact are now flirting with large tax cuts. They have this tension between they want to build the welfare state, they're increasingly reliant on upper middle class voters who they don't want to tax Republicans, they are increasingly dependent on the votes of working class and older voters who value the existing social welfare state. And yet Republicans want to cut taxes more and more and more. And so over the coming decade, we're going to have to decide, these two parties are going to have to decide, you know, what is it that they really value? How important is it to them to embrace this tax revolt and just keep driving revenue down? Are they willing to pay the costs of that? And we're gonna have to find out.

[Noel King]

Vox's eric levitz when we return the last great american tax revolt.

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[Archival/Guest Voice]

Now a Spot announcement. Thank you. Spot.

[Isaac Martin]

Here we go. Explained My name is Isaac Martin. I am a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego.

[Noel King]

All right, so we learned in the first half of the show that Americans are in a bit of a mood about taxes. We don't want to pay them. This is not the first time that this has happened and you, in fact, studied one of the last times that we went through this. It was in the 1970s. What was going on back then.

[Isaac Martin]

There was what we call now the property tax revolt, a major sort of grassroots movement of protest against local property taxes. It was a nationwide thing. It happened in communities all around the US from the nation's capital. The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research presents today's topic, Taxpayers Revolt. But people really remember the events in California because Californians at that time, in 1978, amended their constitution to limit the property tax.

[Archival/Guest Voice]

There are many who believe this is the beginning of something that will go far beyond California. And it is true that 20 odd states already have something in the works more or less similar to Proposition 13.

[Isaac Martin]

And that tax limitation, which they called Proposition 13, then became national news and had all kinds of impacts in and outside of California.

[Noel King]

Proposition 13. I lived in Los Angeles for a couple years. I remember Proposition 13, actually. I remember it being like a big topic of conversation, but not everyone will know of its history. Why does Prop 13 matter? Why is it, like, such a big deal?

[Isaac Martin]

Proposition 13 is a big deal for a few reasons. The first is that it really very dramatically changed the state's tax structure. It did a few things all at the same time. First, it said local governments cannot levy any property tax in excess of 1%. So it capped the property tax rate at 1%. The second and more important thing it did is it put an annual cap on the amount that the assessed value of your property for tax purposes could increase from year to year. So even if your home was, you know, appreciating in value very rapidly, as far as the local tax assessor was concerned, it wasn't actually going up more than 2% per year in value. And that, among other things, constrained the finances of local governments in California. But it also gave property owners a tax break that grew over time the longer they stayed in their homes. It was the beginning of a real cascade of similar changes to California law, including later initiatives in the 1980s that said, that tax break you have on your home, because you got in early, you can pass that down to your children, you can pass that down to your grandchildren. That's one reason why Peter Schrag, who was the editor of the Sacramento Bee for many years, said in the 1990s, Listen, we now have a hereditary aristocracy of property in California. The story of Proposition 13 in California matters for at least a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is that it's a real cautionary tale that you can really lose something very Valuable if you just allow your anger at taxes to take over and you don't think carefully about what to do with that anger. As I understand it, it's a story of sort of the simplest, worst solution to a real crisis.

[Noel King]

Where does this thing, Prop 13, where did it come from?

[Isaac Martin]

First off, property taxes have always been a mess in America. Property taxation is the oldest tax we have in the United States. It predates the republic. And until the middle decades of the 20th century, the property tax really was still being administered as if we were in the horse and buggy era. So the people who were in charge of figuring out how much your house or your business was worth for the purpose of taxing it, they were political animals. And they didn't tend to have much expertise in actually appraising property. Instead, what they would do is just kind of write down from year to year, oh, we wrote down this number for your home last year. Let's write it down again this year.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Let's see here. In 1949, we said it was $10,000. It's 1950, so how about $10,000?

[Isaac Martin]

So they were giving away these kinds of informal tax breaks to people in a way that was often also very political. They might trade a low assessment for bribes. They very commonly traded low assessments for votes.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Thanks for the tip, sir, and I can count on you in November.

[Isaac Martin]

And in the 1960s, led by California, many states then began to reform how they administered the property tax. They brought in computers, they professionalized assessment. And suddenly, for the first time, many, many property owners, especially homeowners in the United States, started to get taxed on the values, the actual values of their homes for the first time.

[Noel King]

Uh oh.

[Isaac Martin]

And it turned out they didn't like that. It was, you know, a cause of an incredible freakout. People petitioning to abolish the property tax. One of the most colorful figures in the movement was a real crank named Howard Jarvis.

[Archival/Guest Voice]

Devon is filled with moochers and loafers right up to their ears, and they have a great idea. The object of a lot of them is to get the job and sit there till they get a paint job, and in the meantime, they don't move in any direction.

[Isaac Martin]

Who was a Los Angeles entrepreneur, kind of serial entrepreneur, who first in the late 1960s, campaigned to abolish the property tax and got nowhere with it, but did get enough traction that he decided it was worth continuing to try. Jarvis found inspiration for his Passion Prop

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

13 campaign in the 1976 Academy Award winning film network I'm As Mad as

[Eric Levitz]

Hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.

[Isaac Martin]

And so then he teamed up with a used car salesman named Paul Gann and took inspiration, actually, from the Los Angeles property assessor, who was also arguing for property tax reforms, a guy named Phil Watson, and wrote in a limitation to state constitutional amendment to limit taxes that became Proposition 13.

[Archival/Guest Voice]

Here in California in the primary tomorrow, people have the rare and no doubt pleasing opportunity to vote their taxes down.

[Isaac Martin]

And they collected more signatures than any ballot initiative in the history of California. And in June 1978, a majority of the voters went for it.

[Archival/Guest Voice]

We have proven here in California that we the people, not the politicians, are still the bus.

[Noel King]

Why did a majority of voters go for it? Was it hard to convince people?

[Isaac Martin]

Jarvis wrote later in his memoir that the best argument was simply to go up to people and say, sign this. It will lower your property taxes.

[Noel King]

Hmm. All right, so the upshot is what exactly what happens after voters say, yeah, this is what we want.

[Isaac Martin]

Quality of services in many cases declined. So it's clear, for example, that there was a shift in fire protection away from professional fire departments towards volunteer fire departments in some parts of the state. It hurt the schools. School finance has continued to, of course, increase in California, as it has elsewhere in the US But California used to be at the top in terms of sort of quality of education and primary and secondary education and in terms of school spending, and now it's definitely not.

[Noel King]

Many critics say Prop 13 is to

[Eric Levitz]

blame for the decline in funding for California schools.

[Isaac Martin]

You see pupil teacher ratios start to skyrocket in the years immediately after 1978. It has hurt the quality of infrastructure, potholes in the roads, response times of first responders. It has shifted the state tax structure onto income taxes, which means that the tax system in California is really swingy. In a boom, a lot of money might flow into the state's coffers. In a recession, the state budget really suffers, especially during the financial crisis. This meant that local governments that no longer could rely on a lot of property tax revenue were especially vulnerable to bankruptcy.

[Noel King]

Today, San Bernardino leaders are expected to declare a fiscal emergency.

[Isaac Martin]

And good morning sun rising on a new day in Stockton. But the local newspaper headline pretty much says it all. Bankrupt. It has also created all kinds of unfairness, new unfairness, rather unlike the old system. So now you might actually pay a lot more tax than somebody else in your neighborhood who again, has an identical home worth the same amount of money just because they bought their home earlier than you did. And they might agree that that's unfair, but they might not vote to change it because it's an unfairness that allows them to stay in their home you're

[Noel King]

aware that Americans are growing irritable about paying taxes and I wonder whether you think it's fair to look at California and see a warning about where the rest of the country might be headed I do.

[Isaac Martin]

I mean I think the history of California really teaches us that you can want your government for free but you can't get it for free the lesson here is that we really value and should value a lot of the public services public goods that our governments provide that doesn't mean that they shouldn't operate efficiently but it does mean that you know when you think about how much you're willing to pay for them you also have to pay attention to what you're willing to give up.

[Noel King]

Isaac martin of ucsd miles bryan produced today jolie myers edited patrick boyd and david tadashore engineered and gabriel donatov checked the facts I'm noel king she's today explained it.