America and Britain are focused on how they "pay for" the programs that everyone knows they need. They fight over funding without any concern for the physical and human resources necessary. They place a higher value on the money than the things the money can deploy to their benefit.
This greatly benefits the wealthy elite, most of whom achieved their wealth by birthright as the old royalty did. When the question of "pay for" arises, usually long before the merits of legislation are debated, the political left wrings their hands in discomfort and points to the wealthy as the obvious source. They, after all, have the only money available and the programs would only decrease their wealth by a modest percentage.
The problem is that the math never works out because to expect the wealthy to "fund" the society means they always must remain wealthy enough to do so and their wealth also buys political power and propaganda favoring them in this tug of war. Having established the wealthy as demi-gods to aspire to being like, they can only be taxed what amount they agree to pay, which isn't much. Certainly not enough to buy what society needs.
We wisely dumped the gold standard long ago, but we never told the citizens/voters what that meant, and the wealthy made sure that the "concept" of the gold standard remained entrenched in our policies and processes deeply enough to make it difficult to separate them from reality. By shoring up the voter's belief that their government functions like their own budget process does it was hoped that they would never find out how their government actually "pays for" the things it needs.
The truth is that it pays for those things by "paying for them" with votes in its legislative bodies and creating whatever money needs to be spent from thin air. Taxes aren't even related to federal spending in any real operational way. Taxes only serve to recapture what excess money makes it to the top in its natural transition up the supply chain to avoid inflation and the problems associated with too much wealth in too few hands. Taxes pay for "NOTHING" and finally end up canceling out the "debt" that created the money when it arrives back at the government sector.
We worship at the same alter as our oppressors in the same language they use against us when we attempt to "pay for" our government's public purpose. The only way we, as individuals, can have the promised rights of simply being human by our founding documents is to assure that all humans have them equally. That means assuring that the necessary resources, not the money which is available in infinite quantity to the currency issuing authority, are available. That requires infrastructure, both physical and human, a means to "source" what we need when we need it. Paying for it is the easy part.
