As I was teaching the American Revolution to high school students, I got to thinking about how the colonists were upset about taxes. Actually they were upset about “taxation without representation”. I pulled out all stops for this lesson by doing the following:
I bought several historical t-shirts (see links below #ad) and props (more links for this too) to help my students become more engaged. But, I could not stop thinking about all of the taxes we pay and what bothers me most is that we just keep on paying them. It is like we are conditioned to do it because our parents did and their parents did it and are great- grands did it but WAIT.. did our great- grands pay all these taxes that we pay every year for pretty much our entire life?
My grandmother was born in 1913 when the 16th Amendment was passed and officially gave the Federal Government the ability to tax everyone but only a few had to pay because of very generous exemptions. So, my Granny was 30 years old before the US Government began to officially enforce payroll withholding in 1943 to help pay for WWII.
So, unlike my crying toddler in the above video, we have only been succumbing to an overwhelming list of legally binding taxes for less than 83 years.
249 years ago, we protested, dumped tea, took up arms against our Mother country and had an entire revolution over small taxes levied on things like tea (see links below about my favorite drinking / not dumping tea.
In less than 83, years have managed to tax everything. The Feds collected 9.73 Trillion dollars in just 2024.
My home state of SC found an extra 1.8 billion in tax money lying around last year. Did they send us a check? Nope
It is getting harder and harder to teach how we became Americans when that give me liberty or give me death spirit is rapidly fading away.
Southern Vintage and All Things Home 
Your article captures something quietly unsettling – that drift from spirited protest to passive compliance – and you frame it with both humour and unease. The parallel between colonial outrage over pennies of tea tax and our modern quiet around trillions collected is pointed, if a little wistful. What’s compelling is not the economics but the psychology: how quickly a people habituate to what once would have felt intolerable.
Your piece invites an important question for students – what makes taxation feel legitimate? “Representation” in the eighteenth century meant literal votes; today it might mean transparency, fairness, or visible return on what we pay in. Your grandmother’s timeline adds texture to that shift – one lifetime from a fledgling income tax to institutionalised withholding. Yet, perhaps the fading of the “give me liberty” fire isn’t only apathy. It might also reflect a trade we’ve made, however begrudgingly – stability over rebellion, complexity over simplicity.
What your students need isn’t nostalgia for protest but curiosity about consent: how citizens today can still shape the systems they fund. Maybe the modern equivalent of dumping tea is demanding not less tax, but clearer purpose.
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