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 just don’t think it adds much to our messaging to be more precise and say something like “the government is spending all this money on war, and one function of your tax burden is to counteract all the extra money supply generated by that spending”. At the end of the day, even though there is no direct link between expenditure and tax revenue in the federal government, it’s not as if the two are not correlated.