• frezik@midwest.social
    2·
    3 months ago

    My econ 101 professor once said “what are the things that even the most anti-government people say the government needs to do? Emergency services.” Then these dense motherfuckers came along to outdo even that.

  • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Fun fact: The government doesn’t actually need to use taxes to pay for things. The amount of currency in the market isn’t fixed, and so the government actually is fully capable of “printing more money” however, this has the potential to cause rapid inflation. So, taxes are a way of reducing inflation, rather than paying for government services.

    • Trantarius@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      3 months ago

      That’s assuming printing money is the default solution. Taxes have existed for longer than that. The earliest taxes were literally a portion of a farmers harvest. You can’t just print more food, or gold, or whatever else. Printing money to fund government was never really an option, so positioning taxes as a solution to inflation just doesn’t make sense. It’s like saying that instead of eating at a restaurant, you could eat roadkill, which you aren’t going to do because of disease, and therefore restaurants are a way of reducing disease rather than providing food.