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I do know that in five years or in ten years governments must still be funded

No, actually they mustn't.

Taxes do not enable sovereign spending. The sovereign, being sovereign, can spend as much as it likes, when it likes.

Taxes take away purchasing power from the private sector, so that it does not create scarcities, and slows or prevents the concentration of financial wealth with a few oligarchs.

You need taxes because you don't want oligarchs, not because you need them to "fund" government activities.

So your argument there is a crisis so shut up about taxes is not very convincing.

That's not my argument. My argument is that there is a crisis so you should shut up about sovereign surpluses. I am all in favour of taxing more to spend more. I am all in favour of taxing oligarchs to cut them down to size. But I consider it industrial-grade insanity to tax more in a futile attempt to hit a meaningless Grief and Stupidity Pact target based on cargo cult economics.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Aug 14th, 2011 at 03:45:42 PM EST
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