I’ve seen a few posts here on Hexbear where people lament their taxes being used for things they don’t like. I get the sentiment, but I think it’s mistaken because it’s not a zero-sum equation where the state must have a monetary revenue equal to or greater than expenditure.
In a state with monetary sovereignty, the taxes citizens pay are not what enables the state to spend money and procure weapons etc. If US citizens paid a billion less in taxes, for example, it would make no difference for military spending.
It’s also a rhetorical mistake in that it plays into right wing framing that justifies austerity, and implies the idea that the wealthy who pay more in taxes are the ones who keep society running and support the poor.
I don’t really agree because I think this is bad politics.
You can discuss MMT on an intellectual level, but for the purposes of talking to normal people and agitating the fact that ‘American taxpayers subsidize Israel and pay trillions for Israel’s many wars of choice’ will always be a trump card.
You might say that this buys into the old paradigm of state financing and leaves you open to arguments for austerity. The problem is that you’ll be even more vulnerable if you try and skip the old paradigm entirely. You’ve gotten this response before. Blow all your cards from the getgo telling a normal person about MMT and they’ll just tell you to learn ‘basic economics instead’. This is not just ignorance on their part, its survival instincts in a society where taxes are never raised on the rich, they are raised on the poor.
Point is, don’t rest on your laurels. The fact that the state destroys money by taxing people is a very real thing that hurts the working classes most of all. The right wing exploits that feeling and you can’t let them have a monopoly over that field. Buy into the old paradigm and THEN ask why there’s austerity for regular people, but perpetual debt issuance for Israel, Wars, Arms Manufacturers, Banks, Large Landowners (‘Farmers’) and Tech Oligarchs.
Once the discussion reaches a certain level you can start treating the sovereign finance system as a common resource being pillaged by the oligarchies. But until then I’d argue that doing so from the getgo is not outmaneuvering austerity mongers, it is yielding the field to austerity. The working classes are in a perpetual spiral of ever decreasing purchasing power now. Service economies are detached from the money makers in FIRE, agriculture or industry. Money at the top only serves to speculate regular people out of their homes. All costs go up except the cost of labor. And taxes are perennially there, never targetting those at the top. If you start talking MMT to a normal person, they’ll have a gut instinct telling them that whatever claim to the truth you may have, they must defend the lower taxes agenda otherwise taxes will be raised on them. Again.
I don’t like the idea of conceding the language entirely. It would be more accurate to talk about “public money”, as that is what it’s supposed to be in a democracy anyway.
When making this post I was mainly thinking about the way people on Hexbear talk about it on the site, rather than how we might go about it when persuading people IRL.