Nice Girls Don't Ask Where Their Tax Dollars Are Going

"It's Your Money" signs from the 1980's and local Philly politics in 2026, and finally some nods to the Star Wars fans!

Back in the 1980’s when I was a kid growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, signs sprang up all over the countryside that said, “It’s Your Money.”

I remember asking what they meant and being told that it was something the Republicans said. It was bad. It seems like this was during one of those waves of media coverage of the “welfare queen” and the idea that people who didn’t work were getting money from the government. This was all very racist and anti-feminist too, I remember being told or believing, or both.

Being a divorced mother in the South during the Reagan years was very difficult, and being the child of a single mother was an experience you don’t forget. A large part of why I have moved to embrace more traditional values is that now I realize how much the experience of not having my father in my home affected me, but that’s a story for another day.

It makes sense that I was a Democrat growing up. Democrats were the party of equal pay for equal work for women. Republicans were the party that said that the only way for women to be good was to be a wife and stay at home mother. Back then, Republicans were the party of slut shaming and Democrats were the party of sexual liberation. Or so I thought.

“It’s Your Money” signs were Republican, and that was bad, so that was enough of an answer for me at the time. My thoughts about taxes back then basically went, “The Republicans call us ‘tax and spend’ liberals, but it’s important that we spend money so that poor people can have food and not be homeless, and kids can get an education.” My analysis wasn’t as simple as that, but it was standard left-leaning, with the assumption that what the government does is good and the money the government raises to do what it does belongs to the government.

When I first began working, at age 14 as a student assistant in the library where my mom was the library director, taxes came straight out of my check. I didn’t think about them, they just disappeared. When I got my first salaried job as an organizer, taxes disappeared as such. Taxes were a part of reality I accepted without question: MY money was the money I made after taxes. The rest could be an offering to the Greek gods for all I really thought about it.

I got into a executive job at age 28 and found myself in the high tax brackets, but I still didn’t care about taxes. I was so happy to be making quite good money by my early thirties and so deep into my work as Director of Organizing for a nurses’ union that I didn’t give taxes a moment’s thought. I never even looked in detail at my check.

My viewpoint changed when I started making money by the hour, by the day, and even by the minute. When you are on salary, things can feel a bit nebulous. A company or organization pays you regularly in exchange for a claim on a large part of your life. If you like the work and the organization, it can feel natural. If not, it can be like living in a cage. Either way, the exchange of money for time is not as clear as when you are paid directly for your time, and free to spend your non-work time as you choose.

One I got paid by the day as a substitute teacher, I started to see things in terms of how much of my time I was giving for them. In 2019 I bought my parents a bouquet of roses for their anniversary. It cost most of a day’s pay, and I was happy to be able to do it. When they almost didn’t get the flowers due to an unusual snowstorm in Chapel Hill, NC, I was on edge - not just because I wanted them to have their gift, but because that bouquet cost me almost a day’s worth of labor. Material wealth and time were no longer unrelated concepts.

Now when I look at my check from work, I see how much is going out in taxes. Federal, state and city. The Philadelphia city tax is 3.74% for residents, 3.43% for non-residents (they don’t get to pay extra to live on our dangerous and often trash-covered blocks.) There is also a tax on soda that combined with the cost of doing business in a neighborhood where there is frequent shoplifting and looting makes a Diet Pepsi two liter at my corner store $3.75. The City Council almost passed a $1 per ride tax on ride shares to close the gap in funding that the school district says it’s can’t close, but it hasn’t passed yet.

The taxes I pay are not abstractions to me. Out of my little income, some portion is going to do the things that state, federal and local government do. So I want to a) know what my taxes are going for b) have some say in how they are spent.

I’m not sure why it’s a conservative position to simply want a say in where my tax money goes. If my tax money funds schools, I want to know what those schools are doing. If a police officer is rarely seen in my neighborhood, I want to know if the police are underfunded, or if they are simply not coming here. Whether one believes that we should all pay high taxes to fund a complete social welfare state with healthcare and free education and treats for our cats, or one believes that we should all keep as much of our money as possible, shouldn’t we all want a voice in how our taxes are spent? Isn’t that part of being a responsible citizen, or did I understand my Social Studies teachers incorrectly?

Yet in the airy-fairy world of those who would tax the mythical rich to pay for programs for the mythical deserving poor, asking where our tax dollars are going is an immediate sign that you are “One of them.”

“Yes…” I say in the voice of the Emperor in The Rise of Skywalker. “Long have I waited…”

I am getting involved in local politics, in large part because I want to know and have a say in where my money is going. In fact, last night I was elected Chairman of my ward. Easiest election I ever had… I walked in and the Ward Leader asked me if I would do it and I said yes! She knew I would say yes because I’ve already demonstrated that I step up and do what needs to be done. An organizer, no matter how many years out of the game, does not need to be asked twice or subtly. As I leave every meeting at my state committeeman’s house, I ask, “Is there anything else I can do?” Always been an action-oriented person.

I want to advocate for the things I think are good, like charter schools and more police and an end to the careless running of stop signs. I want to oppose things I don’t like, such as fare evaders on public transit and people using the streets as public toilets. It’s nice to spend time with other people who think these are rational positions to take, and who have worked hard in their own neighborhoods to make the city safer and more livable, for all of us.

While you can take a girl out of organizing, you can never take the organizer out of the girl. It’s been a while, but my skills are as sharp as ever. So if you could kindly pass me the light saber, let’s get on with it.