2018: When Paying for Our Values Gets Complicated

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:37)
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**Georgia Lee Hussey** (1:03)
There is a narrative right now that government is inefficient.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:09)
Right.

**Georgia Lee Hussey** (1:10)
I find this super interesting because we also live in a city with a couple really big corporations and consequently, I'm in environments with people who are around corporations and the amount of waste that they produce is gross. But nobody's being like, hey, big company, you shouldn't waste your money. There's this feels like there's a double standard in how we talk about the efficiencies of humans getting together in institutions to try to solve problems.
It feels like at the governmental level, we're setting a standard that I don't know that we can meet, given the amount of crises that are piling on to state and local governments.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:56)
Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Torabi. Today, we're asking a question that I think a lot of us feel, but we don't really discuss out loud. Are progressives slash Democrats, liberals, people like me, becoming anti-tax? So a little context here in Montclair, New Jersey, where I live, we recently had a special election. The question on the ballot was, how do we pay back a $20 million school budget deficit, $20 million?
And here's the thing about Montclair, if you don't know it already, we are a very progressive town, maybe the most progressive in New Jersey. This is the town where there are yard signs about kindness. We vote blue by enormous margins. And on this vote, the town was split, even though many people will tell you the reason they moved to Montclair is for the public schools. So this split was not because people don't love education or because people don't believe in public education. A lot of the no votes were actually coming from a really legit place. People wanted to know, will this money actually be used properly this time? Are we just going to be back here in three years having this same vote? Because nothing structural changed. It wasn't anti-tax as much as it was, proved to me, you're going to do the right thing with this money and that this won't happen again. And that it's split in a town like mine is exactly the kind of thing today's guest has been thinking about because historically liberals have been pretty comfortable with tax increases as long as they believe that money would produce a real societal benefit. It's kind of been the deal. But my guest today says she is noticing a shift even in deeply progressive communities like hers where she lives in Portland. There's a growing hesitation, even a flinch when the bill comes due.
Georgia Lee Hussey is a financial planner and founder of Modernist Financial. She has spent her career helping people plan their financial lives. But lately, she's been asking a very big question. Are progressives becoming anti-tax? And if so, what's it about? Is it about the money? Is it about something else entirely? Do we trust our institutions to spend it well?
She's also noticed something that unsettles her. Some of that frustration is starting to echo language that anti-democratic movements have used for a long time. And she just got back from Viena, where a huge share of residents live in subsidized housing. And that got her rethinking what it would even look like if we stopped treating things like housing and child care as problems that we each have to solve alone. So today we're talking about trust, about taxes, and about what it really means to pay for the things that we believe in. Here's Georgia.
Georgia Lee Hussey, welcome back to So Money.

**Georgia Lee Hussey** (4:40)
Oh, it's so good to be here, always.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (4:43)
You have brought something really meaty to my attention. And at first I was like, I don't know. But then I thought about it and I said, well, certainly I feel like I'm observing this in our very liberal town of Montclair, New Jersey.