During the first US presidential debate, at around the point where those watching started to realise that Donald Trump's glide to election day was looking more like an uncontrolled descent with smoke pouring from the engines, the man who won't be president made a very telling point. OK, many telling points.
When Hillary Clinton claimed that Trump hadn't paid federal taxes in years - a claim subsequently borne out by leaked documents printed in the New York Times - Trump made a simple riposte: "That makes me smart."
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Trump responds to tax questions
US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump confirmed that he used a multimillion dollar loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes.
He doubled down on this during the second debate last Sunday claiming - among other things - that avoiding tax through entirely legal but not-widely-available means was the mark of a successful businessman, claiming that billionaire investment guru and entrepreneur Warren Buffett did similar things.
And Buffett responded by releasing his tax returns, showing that nope: the man has paid millions in tax, and millions more in charitable donations. Almost like paying tax was the act of a responsible citizen!
And while Trump is refreshingly up front about thinking that paying tax is for idiots, our own government is evidently of much the same opinion.
The recently-passed tax cuts for those earning over $80,000 a year (supported by Labor and One Nation, let's be clear) were trumpeted as much needed "tax relief" for hard-working Australians, and that raises some immediate questions.
For one, you might ask why changing tax brackets to reduce revenue by $4 billion is a great idea if we're supposedly in a debt-and-deficit nightmare that's allegedly not the fault of the governments that have been in power for the past four years.
Also, you could ask why this "tax relief" is skewed wildly towards the wealthy since a Greens analysis of ATO data found that "Nine in every 10 surgeons will get the tax cut, but only two in every 10 nurses. Eight in 10 school principals will get the cut but only two in 10 classroom teachers."
It's also skewed towards males because, as Greg Jericho points out in his take at the Guardian, "The current average total full-time earnings for men is $88,223, while for women it is just $71,245". He also calculates that the maximum benefit for those affected that amounts to $6 a week which, if you're already pulling $87k-plus a year, is unlikely to make an obvious difference to your walking around money.
But it's the term "tax relief" that needs examination, because it's language designed to frame the issue in a very specific way: to tell you, the taxpayer, that taxation is an onerous burden placed upon you by the cruel and greedy government.
And that, to use a technical term, is complete bollocks.
Here's the truth of the matter: taxation is the single greatest bargain in human economic history.
What you get as a citizen of Australia is absolutely freakin' incredible, considering how little you pay. Even if you spend your life in the highest possible tax bracket for the longest possible time, you're still making off like a bandit compared to if you'd have paid in commercial prices for the services you access.
Fancy building the roads you use? Or the existence of water and sewerage systems? Got the cash to knock up your own reservoir? Good news: you don't need to!
No matter what hour of the day, you have 100 per cent coverage as far as law enforcement goes. The judicial system is operational at all times. If someone wrongs you, by telling law enforcement you make it their problem, neatly removing the need for you to suck it up or dress as a bat and wreak vigilante justice in the dead of night.
If you get sick or injured, you have access to free healthcare right away where you don't have to even diagnose, much less treat, whatever's wrong with you.
You live with an educational system where you learn valuable, potentially lucrative stuff - and even if you don't, it means you live in a society where other people have been trained up in skills you can access when you need them, thanks to education provided by the common wealth of generations of people kicking in a bit.
And you get to access all this every single moment of your entire life! Countries without taxation, let's be clear, don't do this - and a lot of countries with taxation don't do it nearly as well as we do.
And let's be clear: a transparent, accountable governmental provision of services is far, far, far more likely to be cost-effective than those of private for-profit businesses, whose entire model demands packing in a percentage of profit, and more likely to be 24/7 reliable than those of well-meaning but under-resourced charities.
It's hard to know how to reposition tax as something that a patriotic Australians proudly contribute to making their nation stronger, smarter, healthier and safer, despite that actually being the case. Especially given the current government's fondness for maintaining tax havens like ludicrously over-generous superannuation exemptions, negative gearing benefits on investment property and, in the case of the Prime Minister himself, setting up companies in offshore tax havens.
However, it's a realignment we'd be wise to make. So let's start with calling out "tax relief" for the ideological nonsense that it is, shall we?
Andrew P Street's new book The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull: the Incredible Shrinking Man in the Top Hat is out now through Allen & Unwin - and the new Double Disillusionists podcast with Dom Knight, Andrew P Street and special guest Lee Zachariah is up at Soundcloud and iTunes.
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