Somewhere it turned into a major bait and switch, if it was ever a good faith deal to begin with - certainly wasn't for everyone...

Study, work hard, eat some shit, arrive early, stay late, chant the chant, and in exchange you'll eventually go to the places that you want to go to, and likely have time at the end to rest before you die... that was the deal. Looking back, it's so obviously not how life works in practice but for the very few, and only for a short time in history.

Personally, and this is a new one for me, I'm done following rules and conventions no one else follows anymore. I think a lot of people are at some point going to walk away from the grind and reinvent, disconnect and rediscover whatever they lost along the way. Hurt people hurt, and everyone is hurting right now. But, they can heal too.

I'll pay my taxes, but we're really looking at how much we want to be a part of what's goin on in general, from social media, to finance (looking at you DOW), to what we buy and how we spend our time at work and at play. So much of it isn't what we ever really wanted, and so much money needed to keep going.

Juice ain't worth the squeeze.

And assist in the adjudication of past due water tax bills. I had to assist in a case recently where the tax payer refused to pay his bill because “the Bible doesn’t mention anything about water as a tax”. You can probably guess how that ended.

Tell everyone on your Tik Tok in a couple years how it goes. These idiots are leading other people right off a financial cliff. You think you can just not pay and they’re cool with it? First they will charge you penalty and interest for not paying and after long enough they will come after you. Any future year refund you won’t get, they will withhold it to pay your debt, eventually they can garnish your wages. Never listen to idiots like this. How the hell did she become a lawyer???

...sounds applicable right about now.

I paid non resident city income taxes for years because I worked in a city, even though I didn't reside there. Still wasn't allowed to vote in their elections.

...to one of the reasons for the American Revolution.

And given that Congress is responsible for making sure taxes are appropriate and used for the reasons they were passed into law, the abdication of their duties by one party opens up some important conversations, I'd think.