so here's the thing about taxes and money. Is that right now our government is acting under the principles of MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, basically the idea is

so here's the thing about taxes and money. Is that right now our government is acting under the principles of MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, basically the idea is that since the government is using fiat currency anyway it doesn't even really needs taxes since it can just print more. As such taxes no longer are about funding the government but about controlling inflation. Whether or not that is feasible or a good idea is a different discussion. But the basic idea is since we have a fiat currency (that is also a world reserve currency) we don't actually need taxes to fun our government because we can just print more, and that the purpose of taxes is controlling inflation by removing money from the monetary supply. (which also means that inflation is essentially a stealth tax that disproportionately effects those who do not own assets since inflation causes asset value to increase) Now this also means that under MMT there is an interesting knock off effect that I've only recently realized. Taxes do more than just control inflation in MMT they allow you to target who to take money from to control inflation, and you can target particular groups of people, in part to punish or reward them. Now there is one more step from this that those who own assets benefit the most form inflation; however if they also are not taxed appropriately this results in wealth concentrations as the wealthiest benefit from the stealth inflation tax, while at the same time gaining if the taxes are not used to target them. Again, setting aside whether or not MMT is real, useful, wise, good, etc. If we accept the logic of MMT we also then accept this fact. That by not targeting the richest we are effectively using the barrel of a government gun to redistribute wealth from largely the middle class to the elite.