(10-05-2021, 06:25 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(10-05-2021, 04:59 PM)mikesez Wrote: MMT derives from Chartalism.
Chartalism explains that people adopt a government's currency if and only if that government is collecting taxes in that currency.
So even if you go down that road, you still have taxation as an essential function of government.  And the money collected is income to the government.   The big innovation of MMT is they are showing that the taxes don't need to be equal to the spending if the government has control over the creation of money.  However, the taxes still have to exist.  They can't be zero or else people will start to use something else as their main currency.

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Regarding the part in bold, the government doesn't have that.  It comes from "the fed" which is not a government entity.

Also "printing more dollars" does not "create more money".  All it does is put more dollars into circulation.  A VERY simple explanation of it is this.  If a widget costs $1 it's because that $1 is only one of say a million in circulation.  So suppose the government "creates" another million dollars and puts it into circulation, that $1 widget is now worth $2 because the amount of money available has doubled.

Also, taxes are supposed to fund "essential" operations.  Much of what tax money goes toward isn't "essential" for the operation of the government at all levels (federal, state or local).

1) the Fed gets its mission and its powers from Congress, regardless of if it views itself as public or private.

2) printing more money does not inevitably create inflation. If there is slack in the economy, there cannot be inflation. Inflation only happens in response to shortages or bidding wars.

3) what tax money should be used for is a matter of opinion. Your opinion is valid, but I do not agree with it. But I would bet that there are things we agree. I think we agree the tax money should not be used just to make a few government officials rich. I think you would agree that if the two of us have the same living situation, we should pay the same amount in taxes, I shouldn't get any special preference. I think we agree that spending should be distributed evenly, there shouldn't be a bunch of projects in one city, and no spending or projects in another city, when both cities pay taxes.

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