Keith Evans
2 min readAug 19, 2022

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Just stop with the tax schemes. You're only framing the opposition's argument in their language. You're conceding that our nation depends upon the wealthy to fund itself and the public purpose programs you would like, as well as letting your politicians off the hook for not providing them.

Taxation has never "funded" spending at the federal level because it can't. This was true even when we did that gold standard nonsense when taxation provided policy space for spending. Taxation drives the demand for the currency the issuing government can create at will. It also occasionally limits the currency in circulation, but the wealthy don't spend enough to cause an inflation problem if they have access to secure investments, which is the purpose of Treasury bonds.

Name something that you'd like to see funded that can be resourced in the private sector and Congress can afford that thing without collecting a dime of tax revenue. With an infinite amount of currency at its disposal, there is simply no "infinite+1" in math that makes it easier for it to spend if it collects taxes. Taxes and spending are barely related in macroeconomics with a floating fiat currency.

Your obsession with rich people is the reason you can't have decent healthcare or education because you look to them for funding when the US dollar is, and always was, self funding when it is spent into existence by Congress. Also, by accepting that rich people must be taxed before you can have nice things like other countries have you are committing to making sure the wealthy remain wealthy enough to continue funding those things.

I guarantee that if you make the wealthy irrelevant to funding our government and place the burden for the things you want on your government, where it should be, that the wealthy will end up paying far more. However, spending in deficit for the public purpose also generates Treasury bonds, which the wealthy would greatly prefer over high risk investment.

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Keith Evans
Keith Evans

Written by Keith Evans

Meandering to a different drummer.

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