Since October 7, many in the U.S have have grown to understand how our tax dollars fund the genocide in Gaza. This knowledge is inspiring a boom in an old form of resistance — tax resistance.
The problem here is that fed taxes are not used for spending. It's better to call it "public money".
As below: The "govt creates new money... when it undertakes expenditure, rather than spending being financed by taxation from, or debt issuance to, the private sector".
The US system is similar to UK. No fed tax (nor USD borrowing) is used for fed spending.
I think the caveat (not re tax, but re borrowing) is that, if a country's currency holds little value internationally, it may need to borrow higher-valued currency to buy essential imports.
And end up deep in debt -- just where imperialist powers want it.
@DrALJONES@mondoweiss@palestine@israel yes well in that respect they would be foolish to borrow for essentials. They should find something that they need to export or just do without.
Sometimes tourism is a good way to bring in foreign currency, if there are no other obvious exports.
@DrALJONES@peterbrown I think you're both looking at different ends of the same issues.
For internal spending, a country can issue its own money to pay for it; so long as it has the actual resources to achieve the goal, money is just a mechanism.
Where the resources do not exist internally, they have to be traded from abroad. A strong currency- issued by a country with lots of resources that other countries might want- can buy in using that currency. Otherwise they need to trade in resources.
Add comment