• novibe@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Ok I was wrong in one of the examples. It’s indeed very hard to find countries that don’t tax at all, as it’s an important tool to control and maintain currency legitimacy.

    But that doesn’t invalidate what I said at all.

    Taxes are not used to fund the government. The government literally prints money. They are the ones that do it. They can do it whenever they want. They can also borrow almost infinitely unlike regular people. The government doesn’t need to “earn” money to spend it like people.

    They own and control money, the currency as a whole.

    Just read on the origins of money (“Debt the first 5000 years” for example) if you want to understand this more. I’m not a professional explainer so I might fuck things up.

    But yeah, if a government spends too much but has no revenue (from national companies, taxes etc.) their currency can lose legitimacy. But if a country like the US has their whole currency backed by all countries in the world needing to hold huge reserves of it for international trade, the spending can reach astronomical levels before the currency starts to lose legitimacy.

    It’s easier to be replaced by the Yen than to spend too much… Which is why politicians keep raising spending by hundreds of billions every year. But they never need to raise more taxes… Just complaint about the debt when they’re the opposition. Which keeps rising without any negative effect.

    Idk man, like I said I’m not a professional explainer. You can read more on this or see some videos. Like it’s not such a fringe topic, I’m not being an edgy contrarian.