You don’t have to if you define it globally.

Then you're just reimplementing CSS classes in Tailwind.

and so most people using tailwind don’t do that and redefine everything every time. Ignoring or ignorant of the elegance and power of css.

I don’t think anyone is typing out every link at this point.

Html is split into components or views or partials. Links are inside loops etc.

You save time every time you don’t have to think about coming up with a new class name or how it might affect the hierarchy.

I totally understand it feels weird to begin with but on a major project you never worry that your css tweaks might affect some other obscure part of the site.