All I knew playing it was that if I lowered them, the game played cheering sounds and booed me if I raised them.

As a kid, whenever I had to raise taxes, I would raise them one increment higher than I needed and get all the boos. Then lower back down one increment to get the cheers. I figured if you end on cheers, that must mean they are happy, right?

I was raised more on SimCity 3000 but yeah, absolutely no head for finances. Take out every loan, obtain all the money, do whatever you want, and then be shocked when you're bankrupt because suddenly you had to pay all those loans off.