The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes out, it's more like a tired feeling, really.

Poundstone’s line riffs on the biblical phrasing “the wages of sin are death” (Romans 6:23), treating “wages” literally and then undercutting the moral absolutism with a modern, bureaucratic punchline about taxes. The joke turns a theological warning into a commentary on everyday economic life: even the grandest, most final-sounding “wages” get diminished by deductions, leaving not dramatic doom but mundane fatigue. It’s also a satire of how contemporary culture often translates moral or spiritual language into the register of work, money, and personal burnout—suggesting that the felt consequences of “sin” (or simply living) can resemble exhaustion more than cosmic punishment.