Wealth & Money Quote by Mike Fitzpatrick

“Back then” does a lot of quiet work here: it’s a time machine to an era when the telephone was a status symbol, not a utility. Fitzpatrick’s line is built to puncture the absurdity of applying yesterday’s logic to today’s infrastructure. By framing the excise tax as a “luxury tax,” he’s reminding listeners that the levy was born as a moral story about who deserves to pay more: the affluent early adopters, the conspicuous consumers with a gadget on the wall.

The subtext is a familiar political move, but a sharp one: taxes don’t just collect revenue, they carry a theory of society. A tax meant to skim excess from the well-off becomes, over time, a quiet surcharge on the ordinary. The joke is historical drift. What began as a targeted gesture at privilege can calcify into a broad, regressive fee once the “luxury” becomes a necessity. That’s why the line lands: it turns a dry policy artifact into a cultural artifact, a fossil from a time when access to communication itself was stratified.

Contextually, it’s a critique of inertia in tax policy and the way governments keep old revenue streams alive long after their original justification has expired. Fitzpatrick isn’t just arguing about a phone tax; he’s indicting the habit of letting outdated definitions of “luxury” govern modern life.