Leadership Quote by Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s line is the sound of a billionaire trying to make peace with the unromantic machinery of government. By calling taxes “not good things,” he nods to the gut-level American suspicion that money taken by the state is money taken from you. Then he pivots hard: “if you want services, somebody’s got to pay.” It’s a tidy trade-off framed like a business ledger, not a civic sermon. The word “services” is doing quiet but heavy work here, shrinking the moral language of the public good into a consumer transaction: you pay, you receive, end of story.

The subtext is managerial competence as ideology. Bloomberg isn’t asking you to love the state; he’s asking you to accept it as infrastructure. “Necessary evil” is the rhetorical bridge that lets anti-tax voters and pro-government pragmatists share the same sentence without admitting they want the same thing. It’s also a subtle rebuke to magical thinking on both sides: you can’t demand low taxes and high-functioning schools, subways, sanitation, and policing without someone eating the cost.

Context matters: Bloomberg’s brand, especially as New York City mayor, was technocratic governance financed by real revenue, not vibes. In a political culture where “tax relief” often reads as virtue signaling, he offers a colder pitch: adulthood. You may resent the bill, but you can’t pretend the lights stay on for free.