Howdy to all of you and welcome to the most engaging discussion of taxes you've had all week (ha)! This episode is going to take us through the basics of tax policy, including definitions of taxes (such as estate or excise taxes), data on how much the national government brings in with taxes (particularly the income tax), data on the different rates of taxes across all 50 states, and finally a discussion of how we have changed our approaches to taxes over time. Today's episode doesn't include a slide on critical thinking questions, but I'd encourage you to consider just how much taxes affect different groups (depending on whether they are progressive or regressive) and how we can think about taxes in relation to our larger economic policy concerns as laid out in the last episode.