Unless you’re cutting a check in person you’re arguably not feeling it as much as you should.
It’s like how replacing cash toll booths with electronic debit hides the true price you’re paying on the highway.
Literally all Norquist is doing is making it so for about 2 weeks a year, what little free time I have after the kids are down for the night is spent in tense almost-argument with my wife as we seek out all the places our employers have secreted the tax documents they already provided to the IRS. Its such a colossal, pointless waste of time for people who have a simple tax situation.
I have never, not once, looked at the numbers produced by performing my tax return (which, again, the IRS already performs so they can double check my numbers) and thought "Thank you Grover Norquist for keeping me aware of how much my government is costing me!". Because I am already made aware of that when I get my very first paycheck from a new job.
Speaking of toll booths vs electronic debit, when I lived in the Bay Area, I had to commute from east bay to west bay every day. For the first 4-5 months, I was paying cash, because in my scant spare time, I hadn't had time to get transponder and direct debit set up. I was paying $35/week. I didn't become less aware of that cost when I switched to the transponder, because the actual cost was time. Time is something I have very little of, so adding friction just wastes my most limited resource.
Using my most limited resource to make sure I'm aware of how the government might be using slightly too much of my like 10th most limited resource is a waste of my fucking time. Thus, I'm angry not at the government for potentially wasting my money, but at Grover Norquist for wasting my time because he thinks I'm too fucking stupid to realize what's happening.
Taxes don't reduce your purchasing power insofar as everyone else also has to pay them, so your relative amount of post-tax money is the same, and the tax system is progressive, meaning your relative position is actually a little better.
Remember, money isn't real.
You just proved my point without even realizing it.
When you were forced to pay cash, they were forced to show you the price. You even remember the amount now, presumably years later. If they could have you pay cash without seeing the price I’m sure they would. If the price had changed from week to week, you’d immediately realize it because the amounts you’d interact with would change.
But that’s only possible with a purely digital system. As all the numbers happen behind the scenes.
Ask yourself this, why don’t any of those automated toll booths show the amount you “auto paid” rather than just “Ok!” Or “Paid!”? It’s because they explicitly do not want people to know what they are paying so they can raise the rates with minimal flak.
Or maybe it's simpler to just say paid and they did that. I'd wager that they're well aware of push-back over fee increases but still do it anyway, because monopoly. And the roads need the money.
On that note, the real fun is going to be about how do we pay for the roads once the majority of traffic is not pay fuel tax...
If the intent was to get us paying without realizing, they'd add additional incentives (like discounts) to getting the transponder than the fact that its simply (and obviously) faster.
You're constructing this straw man where the price at the register is murky and ill-defined, and if only we could remove the smoke screen, people would see how much money they're losing to taxes. But the reality is that anti-tax folks are the ones making it difficult to understand the price at the register, as it pertains to income taxes. There's quite the conversation to be had about the murkiness of appropriations, certainly. But adding friction to the tax return process doesn't make me want to call my congressman about where my taxes are going, but instead to ask why a senator in Wyoming or Texas is so excited to bend over backwards to protect the business interests of a company based in Mountain View, California, at the expense of all of their constituents?!
Having to at least see the numbers rather than blindly clicking “Yes” on a government run website is not quite there but it’s better than nothing.
If we ever reach a point where the IRS just tells you what they think you owe, they could include the same summary to placate the Norquist types (who undoubtedly will then start complaining about something else).