The USA has a history of not liking taxation much. There are plenty of reasons not to like the way the US does its taxation. US taxes appear complex, unnecessarily time consuming, and occasionally a bit random. And that is without considering the more controversial issue of whether they are ‘fair’. The US government, and its tax code, certainly has flaws. Yet, many of these flaws exist because of the legislation passed by congress. These problems are not because of the people working in government who seek to provide a service to the American people and the wider world. Government workers do vital jobs. IRS agents deserve our thanks.
Michael Lewis And Government Workers
Michael Lewis, known to MBA types for Liar’s Poker and Moneyball and to other people for The Blind Side, has compiled a series of articles by excellent writers on the people behind the US government. These government workers are the people who make things happen. They maintain the national cemeteries, honoring US service people. They work on anti-trust, creating better conditions for consumers. They work on statistics, so we know how much inflation has gone up. They include archivists, preserving vital records so future generations can learn how great we are now.
Of course, this all costs money but Michael Lewis notes how these government workers can create win-wins. One of Lewis’ profiles is of a government worker who specializes in promoting mine safety. This details how the government employee developed new ways to prevent mine collapses. These were a major problem for mine profitability but weren’t being dealt with.
At conferences, they’d [coal mine engineers] come up to him [the government mine safety expert] after he’d explained his work and say, what you are doing is the future. They hadn’t felt compelled to the work themselves, but they were delighted that he had spared them these roof falls that cost them $200 a minute to clean up.
Lewis (2025) page 28
Of course, the most compelling reason to do the work wasn’t $200 a minute. He worked to make the lives of miners, doing a highly dangerous job often in unfashionable parts of the US, safer. But he saved mining companies a lot of money too.
The IRS: What Would America Be Without It?
The IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, raises money to fund the government. It collects taxes, without these the US would be a very different place. USA Facts (an excellent source of information on … well you can guess) breaks down the Income and Expenditure of the US Federal Government.
In the picture below the pink, spending, is much more than the revenue that is brought in, the blue. The US has not had a Federal Surplus since George W Bush took over. Continual deficits have led to most of the nearly trillion dollars of “obligations”, e.g., paying debt interest. Apart from these obligations the spending is all on things that many really people want and even need. Without the Federal government raising money the US wouldn’t have social security, Medicare, or money to send to states to fund their programs. The US wouldn’t be able to spend on defense — imagine that Canada could threaten the US with annexation. Of course, Canada wouldn’t do something like that, but people in the US wouldn’t like it if that were a possibility.
How can the good things be paid for? The vast majority of the money brought into the federal government comes from the work of the IRS — the Internal Revenue Service. IRS agents deserve our thanks whenever the government does anything that we want it to do.
IRS Agents Deserve Our Thanks
Possibly the most dramatic story in the book comes from Geraldine Brooks’ story of an IRS agent who works on tackling crime. This IRS agent deals with some really nasty stuff and puts away a lot of people you wouldn’t want on the streets. The IRS agents, given their financial skills, could likely make a lot more in the private sector, but they choose to work to make the world a better place.
… tireless dedicated people, working all hours, shutting down suppliers of fentanyl, saving kids, disrupting terrorists …..
Geraldine Brooks in Lewis (2025) page 150
IRS agents deserve our thanks, as do all who work to make our societies better.
For notes on improving government see Behaviourally Informed Government Policy, Who Doesn’t Want Nudges And Competent Government?, and Improving Stakeholder Involvement In Government Decision Making
Read: Michael Lewis (2025), Editor, Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service, Penguin Random House
