"How can not collecting a tax create a cost?"
That's your crazy holiday-spoiling relative's inevitable comeback should you dare try to show by example for whom The Congress, writ large, really works. To that end, point out that the canard of the "farm families and shopkeepers" who are forced to pay this death tax make up that speck in the jeweler's loop between the eyes of the one on the left, and I also wish you luck trying to reach a common understanding of the balance sheet.
It may make for a good maxim not to allow people who can't keep their own fiscal houses in order the franchise to elect representatives to do the same for the nation, but this is America and we couldn't keep people away from the polls in such a discriminatory fashion.
