this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2026
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That's a misapprehension of how taxes work. Let me put it this way: You need a currency BEFORE you can tax in that currency. So Money and Spending comes FIRST.
Money isn't created "when the government collects taxes" not at all (it actually dies when taxes are collected, that's a zeroing mechanism of economies). Having a "sovereign currency" means the government has the SOLE RIGHTS to printing that currency. That's how money is created. "Tax Revenue" is when money "returns" (which is what "revenue" means - it's a receipt of payment made) it zeros out money that was already spent.
This is because all money is debt, it's created as debt. Taxes return the debt to the debt holder (The Government, who invested in starting the currency). Taxes are always covering things that have been done in the past.
I mean, let's say you have a colony, it's a small colony and doesn't grow much, and there's 1 million dollars in circulation. The government has a project there, that will cost 1 million dollars to complete (it's a new colony, they want to pave roads, build bridges, and install public infrastructure). IF they JUST printed the money, and paid the trades people/workers to do all this, there'd suddenly be 2 million dollars, in a small economy whose natural growth/circulation/trade was only at 1 million dollars. This would double inflation over night. Causing massive price increases, devaluing the currency, corrupting wages, and basically pissing off everyone.
So what do they have to do? They issue a tax, that they believe will pull approximately 1 million dollars out of the system. The taxation didn't CREATE money for the government to spend (that would increase inflation), it killed off money.
So taxation is a form of wealth re-distribution, and is where money as debt ends up (if you're trying to run a balanced economy with a natural growth rate). So when the wealthy refuse to pay taxes, they're cheating the system, contributing to inflation, and refusing to re-distribute any of the wealth they've stolen from underpaid workers and tax paying citizens.
In short, taxes don't pay for things. Money is issued by authority of the government alone (sometimes called an "appropriation"), and then taxes (ideally) zero out over spending not in line with value/market growth.