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> government (taxpayers'?) money The question mark makes me think there is some uncertainty here and I am irrationally upset about the ambiguity. Of course it

by voisin 3y ago

> government (taxpayers'?) money The question mark makes me think there is some uncertainty here and I am irrationally upset about the ambiguity. Of course it is taxpayers’ money! What is possibly unclear about the situation?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
foobarian 3y ago
How is it just taxpayers? What about non-tax paying citizens? And what about government revenues from non-tax sources?
wizzwizz4 3y ago
> What is possibly unclear about the situation? While that's how things work at the district or even state level, that's not quite how money works at the federal level. To a first-order approximation, federal government spending is a tax on dollar-holders, with federal tax corresponding roughly to fealty (such service being delivered to dollar-holders). They're decoupled because the US federal government, via the Treasury, is able to create and destroy dollars. The IRS is responsible for collecting taxes, but delivers them to the Treasury for reallocation or destruction. Since money is fungible, only the net change in extant money matters, and they don't actually have to destroy and reprint notes… though in unrelated news, they do also do that. Though, at organisational levels below the central bank… once money has been set aside for the interests of the commons, does it truly still belong to those it was appropriated from? If I give money to a malaria charity, I don't then get to say "hey, spend that money on vaccines instead of nets": it's theirs to allocate as they see fit. If I don't like how a charity organises money, I'll choose a different one: just like how, if you don't like how your local government organises communal resources, you should vote accordingly (which, in theory, works) and otherwise take political action.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > While that’s how things work at the district or even state level, Aside from the fact the fiscal argument you are making isn’t the most important reason why the “taxpayers’ money” thing is wrong at all levels, its also not accurate even within the narrow view of “where does the money come from” at the district or state level, either, since those entities get funded by sources that aren’t “the taxpayers” as well, including other levels of government, like the feds, for whom you acknowledge (correctly) that it is not true because of money creating power.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    But "other levels of government" are also getting the money from taxpayers, and money printing is constrained by its propensity to cause inflation, so in practice the amount of it that happens will correspond to the amount necessary to hit the Fed's inflation targets rather than scaling with the amount of government spending. Consequently any incremental increase or decrease in government spending would have to correspond to the same increase or decrease in tax collection, whether as the full amount in the current year or as future interest payments via deficit spending.
    - wizzwizz4 3y ago
      Inflation is when the number of dollars increases faster (or decreases slower) than the amount of value in the (USD) economy does. If the money is invested in a way that creates over a dollar's worth of value per dollar, printing money can actually reduce inflation. In typical circumstances, such investment possibilities do not exist. However, in disasters (e.g. a 4-year-old virtuoso needs surgery to repair a ventricular septal defect; an average person is homeless and needs a place to live; an asteroid's on a collision course with the planet), creating additional money is often the correct decision. Experts disagree whether the recent pandemic was such an opportunity and – if so – what the correct response was: we saw lots of different strategies playing out in lots of different countries, but I don't think that's helped resolve the controversy.
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Of course it is taxpayers’ money! No, its the government’s money. Or, viewing the government as merely an agency for collective action, it is the citizens’ money. Obviously, the citizenry and the taxpayers have substantial overlap in most real systems, but they aren’t the same group.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  By that logic it's actually Intel's money, because it used to belong to the taxpayer, but the law says that Intel gets it now. The trillion dollars spent on the F-35 was quite an inefficient use of Lockheed's money.
dimask 3y ago
That is the government that decides to spend the money is a fact. Whether the "taxpayers" (and what "taxpayers" means) are the ones that will pay for it, is an interpretation up to perspectives on political economy.

by voisin 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

foobarian 3y ago

How is it just taxpayers? What about non-tax paying citizens? And what about government revenues from non-tax sources?

wizzwizz4 3y ago

> What is possibly unclear about the situation? While that's how things work at the district or even state level, that's not quite how money works at the federal level. To a first-order approximation, federal government spending is a tax on dollar-holders, with federal tax corresponding roughly to fealty (such service being delivered to dollar-holders). They're decoupled because the US federal government, via the Treasury, is able to create and destroy dollars. The IRS is responsible for collecting taxes, but delivers them to the Treasury for reallocation or destruction. Since money is fungible, only the net change in extant money matters, and they don't actually have to destroy and reprint notes… though in unrelated news, they do also do that. Though, at organisational levels below the central bank… once money has been set aside for the interests of the commons, does it truly still belong to those it was appropriated from? If I give money to a malaria charity, I don't then get to say "hey, spend that money on vaccines instead of nets": it's theirs to allocate as they see fit. If I don't like how a charity organises money, I'll choose a different one: just like how, if you don't like how your local government organises communal resources, you should vote accordingly (which, in theory, works) and otherwise take political action.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> While that’s how things work at the district or even state level, Aside from the fact the fiscal argument you are making isn’t the most important reason why the “taxpayers’ money” thing is wrong at all levels, its also not accurate even within the narrow view of “where does the money come from” at the district or state level, either, since those entities get funded by sources that aren’t “the taxpayers” as well, including other levels of government, like the feds, for whom you acknowledge (correctly) that it is not true because of money creating power.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  But "other levels of government" are also getting the money from taxpayers, and money printing is constrained by its propensity to cause inflation, so in practice the amount of it that happens will correspond to the amount necessary to hit the Fed's inflation targets rather than scaling with the amount of government spending. Consequently any incremental increase or decrease in government spending would have to correspond to the same increase or decrease in tax collection, whether as the full amount in the current year or as future interest payments via deficit spending.
  - wizzwizz4 3y ago
    Inflation is when the number of dollars increases faster (or decreases slower) than the amount of value in the (USD) economy does. If the money is invested in a way that creates over a dollar's worth of value per dollar, printing money can actually reduce inflation. In typical circumstances, such investment possibilities do not exist. However, in disasters (e.g. a 4-year-old virtuoso needs surgery to repair a ventricular septal defect; an average person is homeless and needs a place to live; an asteroid's on a collision course with the planet), creating additional money is often the correct decision. Experts disagree whether the recent pandemic was such an opportunity and – if so – what the correct response was: we saw lots of different strategies playing out in lots of different countries, but I don't think that's helped resolve the controversy.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Of course it is taxpayers’ money! No, its the government’s money. Or, viewing the government as merely an agency for collective action, it is the citizens’ money. Obviously, the citizenry and the taxpayers have substantial overlap in most real systems, but they aren’t the same group.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
By that logic it's actually Intel's money, because it used to belong to the taxpayer, but the law says that Intel gets it now. The trillion dollars spent on the F-35 was quite an inefficient use of Lockheed's money.

dimask 3y ago

That is the government that decides to spend the money is a fact. Whether the "taxpayers" (and what "taxpayers" means) are the ones that will pay for it, is an interpretation up to perspectives on political economy.