Before we can turn our economy around we "must" learn to view it through the lens of reality and not the one we were told is real by those who benefit from the myths and their bought and paid for politicians. No system that is based in fallacies can ever serve the people it was intended to benefit, and almost everything we think about money and its creation is false.

There is no finite pot of US dollars sitting in some vault somewhere waiting to be "earned" by the people so they can pay taxes and "fund" their government. Money is created on demand by our government and it funds us, not the other way around. Taxes serve to give the currency value (try not paying them in US dollars if you don't believe this) and occasionally to allow us to have less of it.

Regardless of how much we might pay in taxes, the infinite supply of dollars available to Congress to "pay for" public purpose spending is still just infinite. There is no "infinity+1". The concept of taxes funding the monopoly issuer of the currency is only convenient to those who profit from the zero sum game that imposes on our monetary system and is not evident in any examination of the reality of that system.

This reality means that the federal government (specifically Congress) can "afford" anything that exists and is priced in the dollars it can create at will and on demand. This includes any labor that the private sector rejects and any benefits that don't directly result from labor, such as our retirement and healthcare, even without revenue or debt. One cannot collect or borrow what doesn't yet exist.

This means that "any" suffering that can be mitigated by spending money into existence is entirely a "political" decision and not economics. Our elected representatives might be wise if they admit this reality before the people have a collective epiphany about economics and who is responsible for their present miserable condition. They might be risking far more than their jobs.