Sorry, this is just flat out wrong. Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism had thoroughly dissected how the US can uniquely fund hundreds of military bases around the world simply through recycling the excess dollars spent overseas back into US treasuries.

Governments with monetary sovereignty aren’t funded by taxes. If you’re US citizen who earns dollars, then those dollars are simply “tax credits”. All of the dollars in your bank account belongs to the US Federal Government, who reserves the right to take away your money (usually through tax hikes) because you never owned them in the first place!

When you pay your taxes, they don’t go into funding government programs. Your money gets destroyed in the Treasury.

Instead, you use the extra “tax credits” (money not being taxed yet) to obtain real goods and services that you can use, consume and enjoy. The government controls how much treats you can get simply by adjusting how much “tax credits” you can have. When the government raises taxes, you get less “tax credits” to buy stuff to consume. Similarly, when the government reduces deficit spending, there are less “tax credits” being circulated in the economy, and so you (and everyone) get less “tax credits” to buy stuff.

The Republicans are king at deficit spending - but the money goes to the military industrial complex instead of public infrastructures that benefit the working people. Biden’s interest rate hike over the past two years also paid out interests mostly to rich people, while poor working class people are being squeezed harder than ever. This is the power of the State - they can do whatever they see fit with the currency simply by spending where it matters (to them).

The same goes for billionaires. None of Elon Musk’s money belongs to him. They all belong to the US Federal Government, who reserves the right to confiscate every single dollar that Elon Musk “owns” if it ever wishes to do so. The government does not need a single dollar from Elon Musk to fund its spending, it can print the dollar any time it wants! The government can tax billionaires because they simply want to, not because they need the billionaires’ money. This is the power of the State.

From the perspective of the government, money and taxation are simply tools to shape the socioeconomic activities. If some segment of the society has accumulated too much wealth, then taxation can be used to decrease inequality. If the government wants to punish bad behavior (smoking, public hazard etc.), then taxes are incurred on such products to discourage consumption.

Remember, money is debt, and debt is just promise. Money has no inherent value (Michael Hudson would literally call you a fascist if you believe in such nonsense lol - a few years back during an online discussion, he suddenly lost it when a random person in the audience asked this innocuous question and got called a fascist by Hudson lol) - it is simply debt/promise from the government (hence “government debt”).

Once you have made this fundamental shift in understanding how money (debt) works, you will understand how powerful the State truly is over Private Capital. And once you have realized how the dollar is a global reserve currency that is not tied to anything (i.e. fiat instead of gold standard during the British Empire), then you will understand how much power the US State has over the rest of the world.

Sure, but taxes are just to prove creditworthiness for bond sales. Governments are not funded by taxes. The US military’s primary purposes are to generate capital for the shareholders of defense contractors and be a big enough stick to threaten allies that don’t use dollars to buy Treasury bonds. All the other stuff, wars included, is secondary.

I mean I already DMed him a different suggestion for what he should do to himself but I like how you have this patience and kindness that I just can’t find for husks like that