The false idea that fed taxes pay for gov’t spending is a really terrible one

By Jeff Epstein, Citizens’ Media TV (Facebook, Twitter) and Activist #MMT (the podcast) (Facebook, Twitter)

The false idea that federal taxes pay for government spending is a really terrible one. It actively & directly sabotages our ever actually getting what we need to stop our death, suffering, bankruptcy, & unemployment.‬

(This article is adopted from this twitter thread.)

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If federal taxes were needed to pay for government spending, then giving people what they need “raises our taxes” (a bad thing!) and reducing or eliminating these programs “reduces our taxes” (a good thing!).

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People are terrified right now of their taxes going up and desperate right now for them to go down. The “expensive” program they don’t yet have is an unknown.)

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‪If federal taxes were needed to pay for government spending, then the only way to continue paying for stuff in the long term is to keep the obscenely wealthy obscenely wealthy. Even if we completely eliminated money from our politics, we would still fundamentally depend on the rich for what we need as a society.

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If federal taxes were needed to pay for government spending, then the obscenely wealthy would necessarily be our saviors. (If the federal government really did need our money, then who would they, by far, get the most from?)

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‪Because we falsely believe that fed taxes are needed to pay for government spending, we unknowingly volunteer to hand over control of the vast majority of society’s resources (real tangible stuff) – including ourselves as labor.

‪Finally, the false idea that fed taxes pay for gov’t spending is deeply sinister and fundamentally racist. Unambiguously so. Our equality as human beings becomes much less important than the equality of dollars we can afford to pay in taxes.

This is elaborated on in the book Racial Taxation by Camille Walsh. The disadvantaged pay less in taxes and so “deserve” less in services, including education – which is necessary to increase one’s station in order to pay more in taxes.

amount paid in taxes > one’s humanness

Conclusion

Thankfully, federal taxes don’t pay for government spending. In fact, they can’t. It’s not possible.

This is a wonderful thing.

The only thing scarier to an obscenely rich person than:

“You want to take my money to pay for your stuff!!”

Is:

“Waitaminute. You don’t need to take my money to pay for your stuff?!”

Make the rich irrelevant. Not our saviors.

Elaborating on this, below, is macroeconomics expert Ellis Winningham being interviewed by Steve Grumbine on Real Progressives.

#LearnMMT

To #LearnMMT in general, here is a good place to start. (On twitter? Start here.)

Link to video