To add some real world numbers: it seems that federal, state, and local taxes total about 40% of the $18.6 trillion GDP, or $7.4 trillion per year. The broad mo

To add some real world numbers: it seems that federal, state, and local taxes total about 40% of the $18.6 trillion GDP, or $7.4 trillion per year. The broad money supply M2 is about $13.8 trillion. So more than half of all the USD in existence anywhere need to be handed to US governments every year! If the value of the USD were to fall precipitously, this fraction would go up. It seems crazy to think that this doesn't bound the value of the dollar.