I am once again asking you to drop the taxpayer framing. Previously.
It’s not technically accurate, but I don’t think it’s necessary to include a crash course on MMT every time you are making a post agitating against imperialism. In fact, I think it’s counterproductive.
You don’t have to give a lesson in MMT, you simply don’t mislabel federal spending as taxpayer money.
Why? As I said:
Firstly because it just factually isn’t, but more importantly because that false framing serves the interests of the bourgeoisie. One of its more subtle sins is that it leaves the impression that those who pay federal income taxes ought to have more say than those who don’t, and that the more one pays the more say one ought to have. But just in general, this framing is foundational to the bourgeois project of obfuscating how fiat money actually works. For instance, we’re not supposed to understand the intentionally complicated, obfuscatory nonsense that the government must sell treasuries to the bourgeoisie in order to fund itself. The government doesn’t need that money at all, and all that really does is give the wealthy a safe place to park their capital with interest, temporarily removing it from the productive economy.
What are you talking about? Spending trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in a span of a single generation on something other than killing brown people, on anything else really, is a pretty good framing to me.
The issue isn’t what the US spent money on. The issue is specifically that De la Cruz framed it as “taxpayer” money, which it wasn’t, because US federal taxes pay for literally nothing. Previously.
The issue isn’t what the US spent money on
federal taxes pay for literally nothing
That is the issue, they paid for bombs and planes and tanks and drones and camps and guns… I’d rather they have paid for houses, trains or parks. And I feel like most people would agree with this framing.
You can’t just deny the entire reality as a basis of your argument. Which is, to clarify, money spent on war on terror could not and should not have been spent better?
The point is that federal spending is not funded by taxes in any capacity. It’s more accurate to imagine the IRS dumping every dollar they collect into a black hole, and every dollar that gets spent by the federal government as coming out of an interdimensional portal.
flat earther economics
Indeed, the hegemonic neoclassical/neoliberal economics is flat earth economics. Or as Marxist economist Michael Hudson calls it, Junk Economics.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Link 4:
I’m not denying any of what the federal government spent money on, and that’s all great stuff for agitation. She definitely should do that. I’m simply saying that federal spending doesn’t come from taxes, and we oughtn’t perpetuate a falsehood that serves bourgeois austerity narratives.
What’s the source for the 4.5 million figure? It’s believable – I’ve seen sourcing on numbers running into the millions – but it’s large enough that we shouldn’t expect to toss it out there without immediately being asked for the basis.
Perhaps from Brown University’s Costs of War Project report (PDF).
Responsible Statecraft: The War on Terror led to over 4.5 million deaths: report
…and killed the civil rights of billions.
