We talk a big game about taxes, until the bill actually shows up in our inbox. This week I'm digging into a question that's been nagging at me ever since Montclair, one of the most progressive towns in New Jersey, split down the middle over a special election to cover a $20 million school budget deficit. It wasn't that people stopped believing in public schools. It was more like, prove to me this actually fixes anything.
That flinch, the gap between what we say we believe and what we're willing to pay for, is exactly what financial planner Georgia Lee Hussey has been sitting with. Georgia is the founder of Modernist Financial, and she's noticed something uncomfortable happening even in deeply progressive circles: a growing resistance to taxes, alongside language that sounds a lot like the anti-government scripts used by anti-democratic movements.
We get into:
The Portland preschool tax story that started Georgia down this rabbit hole
Why there's such a gap between "I support this policy" and "I resent paying for it"
Whether this is really about money, or about trust, especially with trust in government sitting at a historic low
What "paying" can look like beyond a check: time, civic skills, citizen journalism, showing up
The line between healthy skepticism of government spending and something more corrosive
What Georgia saw in Vienna, where a huge share of residents live in subsidized housing, and what (if anything) that model could teach an American system built on individual tradeoffs
Her advice for a median-income family when no amount of smart financial planning can solve housing, elder care, or college costs on its own
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