In real estate, we often talk about “highest and best use” as if it applies only to land. But tax policy also has a highest and best use. It can either reinforce the long-term capacity of a society to build, connect, and endure — or quietly undermine it.
That is why Warren Buffett’s remark landed with such force. Not because the scenario is literally achievable, but because it exposes a structural asymmetry we have normalized. When highly profitable corporations can legally contribute little or nothing in federal income tax, while ordinary households carry the baseline burden, we are no longer discussing efficiency alone. We are discussing the architecture of responsibility.
For those of us who think in terms of cities, infrastructure, and development cycles, this matters more than it first appears.
Every modern real estate market rests on public systems that no private balance sheet can fully replace: transport networks, water infrastructure, courts, schools, energy grids, emergency services, environmental regulation. These are not abstract line items. They are the invisible platform beneath land value. A logistics park is worth more because roads exist. A mixed-use district succeeds because public transit works. A residential neighborhood retains value because civic institutions remain functional.
So when 88 major companies generate $105 billion in profit and pay no federal income tax, the conversation should not be reduced to politics or fairness alone. It is also a question of capital formation at the national scale. What kind of built environment are we financing — and what kind are we starving?
I have spent much of my career looking at how land strategy intersects with public planning. One lesson is consistent across geographies: the most resilient cities are not merely pro-growth; they are pro-balance. They understand that private enterprise and public capacity are not opposites. They are partners, whether they acknowledge it or not.
This is where I believe the status quo deserves a challenge. For too long, we have treated taxation as separate from innovation. In reality, it is one of the deepest design tools we have. A smarter tax framework could reward productive investment, decarbonization, housing delivery, brownfield regeneration, and transit-oriented development — while limiting the kind of accounting strategies that extract value from the system without replenishing it.
Technology will only sharpen this debate. As AI, automation, and capital-light business models generate outsized profits with smaller labor footprints, the traditional tax base linked to wages becomes more fragile. If we continue relying primarily on individuals to finance the civic realm, we may discover that the 20th-century tax model is poorly suited for a 21st-century economy.
Cities are shaped not only by what we build, but by what we choose to fund together. The deeper question is whether our fiscal logic still reflects that truth — or whether we are already living inside an outdated blueprint.