Possessed, and Eaten

The Week: The federal government is spending ever more money servicing an ever-larger debt pile. [...] Mostly it's because the government doesn't collect enough tax revenue to cover the cost of federal programs — a problem exacerbated by multiple rounds of tax cuts.

Also The Week: More home sales trigger capital gains tax. Here's how it works and how to avoid it.

And, okay, I get it, taxes suck. And this is where I would normally say "but it seems strange to point out that the United States doesn't collect enough tax revenue to cover the cost of services for the citizens, and then clickbait those same citizens with a potential tax-avoidance strategy." But this is the way the world tends to work. People want "free" government services and benefits; note the constant calls for "free" healthcare from the American Left, or calls for more military and police spending, coupled with lower taxes, from the Right. But there's no such thing as free... someone has to pay for these things. And that would be us, the taxpayers. Granted, typical answers to this are that "billionaires" aren't paying "their fair share" of taxes or welfare programs for the undeserving poor are rife with "waste, fraud and abuse," and so the government should be going after them and leaving the rest of us alone, but I don't recall anyone running a campaign on even returning to the tax rates of the late Reagan Administration or rolling back the welfare state to pre-New Deal. So it doesn't seem that anyone regards this as a winning political strategy.

The United States runs up debts because the citizenry wants things, either for themselves or others, but chafes at what it perceives to be crushing tax burdens. And politicians respond to that, at least if they want to stay in office. And it works to keep them in office because kicking the can down the road, and laying the blame on someone else, gets people what they want. The Week doesn't have a coherent editorial position on this because it's catering to an audience that doesn't have a coherent position on taxation and debt, either.