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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 9/24/18

"Taxpayer Money" Threatens Medicare-for-All (And Every Other Social Program)

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Jim Kavanagh
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Taxpayers are users, not issuers, of the currency. They cannot and do not provide original revenue for the government to spend; they return a portion of the fiat money the federal government has already spent into the economy and wants to recoup. Fiat dollars can be thought of as interest-free loans that do not have to be fully repaid.

The idea the government needs to collect tax revenue (or revenue of any kind) to spend is a vestige of an obsolete currency system, more archaic even than Maggie. As the sole currency issuer, the US government can, and does, create as many dollars as it wants, without "collecting" any dollars in advance from any source. And a "tax dollar" does not go to fund government spending; it cancels out a debt, turns a -1 in the government's ledger into a 0. You can't spend a 0.

As Ellis Winningham puts it : "All federal spending is dollar creation. All federal taxation is dollar destruction."

All of this makes the federal government completely different from, and incommensurable to, any household, business, or state or local government, all of which do have to collect money from somewhere else--taxes, loans, or the federal government--to pay for their spending.

To be clear, and to address a misunderstanding of many progressives, the fact that taxation does not fund government spending does not mean that taxation is unnecessary. On the contrary, taxation is an indispensable condition that makes the fiat monetary system work by requiring tax payment in the fiat currency. It also serves important social functions. Economically, it's necessary to help control the money supply, aggregate demand, and therefore inflation. Socio-politically, it's necessary to direct where the money goes and promote or discourage specific social goals--most important for the left, to prevent wealth inequality.

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Former college professor, native and denizen of New York City. Blogging at www.thepolemicist.net, from a left-socialist perspective. Also publishing on Counterpunch, The Greanville Post, Medium, Dandelion Salad, and other sites around the net. (more...)
 

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