who has money left over to fund things like public healthcare, education, retirement, childcare, elderly care?

The currency-issuing government has an unlimited supply of money that is never dependent upon revenue. It can “afford” anything that is available and priced in the currency it creates by decree.

As long as we perpetuate the myth that taxpayers fund their government the numbers will never work. Properly funding the things society needs to remain cohesive and productive can only be accomplished by an entity that has an endless source of the money, which is the federal government.

Expecting the market to fund the big things that everyone depends upon, education, healthcare, etc, is a recipe for disaster. Markets require profits and private funding, which are the source of inflation. The common propaganda is that government inefficiencies leave plenty of room to cover those, but that fails to recognize that the private sector cannot increase the money supply, regardless of profitability/efficiency, while the government does every time it spends.

Controlling the money supply is the function of taxation, not procuring funding for the government. Taxation is never actually “revenue” for our government, contrary to popular opinion. That opinion is largely responsible for the shrinking share of productivity available to the working class. The perception of taxpayers “paying for” government-funded programs creates the false impression of government as a “competitor” for scarce funds, not the source of those funds that it is.

The currency-issuing government never “needs” our currency to enable its spending, but it does need us to need its currency to pay taxes and occasionally it needs us to have less of its currency. Quality education, healthcare, modern infrastructure, and a livable wage are all things we can have by simply electing lawmakers who understand the role of government and that all misery that can be mitigated with increased spending is entirely a political decision, not economics.