Ignorant Voting Begets Adverse Outcomes. In the vernacular, if you don’t understand what you’re voting for, you’ll get screwed.
Here are excerpts from an article in the December 25th issue of THE WEEK Magazine:
GOP moderates revolt as ACA subsidies set to expire
The Republican majority is right to stand firm on the credits, said National Review in an editorial. To agree to an extension now would be to accept them in perpetuity, imposing a $350 billion cost over a decade to expand a program “that’s proven a costly failure.”
Most Americans get their health insurance through Medicare, Medicaid, or employer-based plans that will be unaffected.
To gain an “incremental” edge in next November’s midterms is not worth “demoralizing Republican voters who still oppose throwing more taxpayer money at broken government programs.”
The fact is that ZERO TAXPAYER MONEY is used for Obamacare or for any other federal program. State and local taxes pay for state and local spending. Federal taxes do not pay for federal spending.
If you don’t understand the difference between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty, please don’t cast a vote in the next election until you do. Ignorant Voting Begets Adverse Outcomes.
Republicans who endlessly blast Obamacare as a disaster aren’t “reading the room,” said Michael Hiltzik in the Los Angeles Times. The program they deem a “juicy partisan target” has steadily increased in popularity since 2016 and is now viewed favorably by 64% of voters.
And “Americans have voted for the ACA with their feet.” Enrollment has more than doubled since 2018, from 11.4 million to 24.3 million today.
Meanwhile, Republicans, who routinely fail to offer cogent arguments against Obamacare, have for 15 years failed to “conjure up a better program,” instead trotting out one unworkable proposal after another.
State and local governments are taxpayer-funded. States, counties, cities, and school districts cannot create dollars. They must obtain dollars before spending
They obtain dollars from taxes, fees, borrowing, and federal transfers. They only are currency users, just like households and firms.
If tax revenue falls, they must cut services, raise taxes, or borrow. So, for monetarily non-sovereign entities, the question, “How will you pay for it?” is a constraint.
The Monetarily Sovereign federal government is a currency issuer.
The U.S. federal government issues the U.S. dollar and spends by crediting bank accounts, which it can do endlessly, without collecting taxes. It does not need to “get” dollars from anywhere first.
The operational sequence is: Congress and the President authorize spending. The Treasury instructs the Fed to mark up bank reserves. New dollars come into existence.
Taxes and bond sales happen after spending, not before. No federal spending is funded by taxpayers.
The sole purposes of federal taxes are to create demand for dollars (you must get them to pay taxes) and to control the economy (sin taxes, carbon taxes, etc.)
Federal taxes do not provide the dollars that the federal government spends.
When politicians say, “This program must be paid for,” “This is unsustainable,” or “This increases the deficit,” they speak as if the federal government were a household.
“Pay-fors” exist because voters have been trained to think that, because money is scarce to them, it also is scarce to the Monetarily Sovereign federal government, the original inventor of the dollar.
This training comes from the very rich, who do not want the rest of America to understand these facts: The federal government could easily, without taxing, fund no-deductible Medicare for everyone, a far more generous Social Security for everyone, plus food aid, housing aid, and education aid for everyone.
The rich promulgate the “Big Lie in economics” (that the government should avoid deficit spending) because of Gap Psychology, the desire to distance oneself from those below and to be nearer to those above.
The very basis of economics can be found in Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology, two fundamentals that seldom are discussed by the media, politicians, or universities.
Strip away the rhetoric, and everything we’ve been circling collapses to those two ideas—one technical, one psychological—and both are systematically avoided.
Monetary Sovereignty explains why the federal government cannot run out of dollars, why “funding” is a misnomer at the federal level, why deficits are normal, necessary, and beneficial, and why state/local governments are fundamentally different creatures.
If this were taught plainly, “How will you pay for it?” would disappear as a serious question, austerity would be recognized as a terrible policy choice, not a necessity, and entire political platforms would collapse overnight.
So, it is not taught because it is destabilizing to the upper income/wealth/power structures.
Gap Psychology, the emotional engine underneath, explains why people resist Monetary Sovereignty even when shown the mechanics. “Rich” is a comparison. To become richer, other groups must become relatively poorer. You must gain wealth, and/or others must lose wealth.
Understanding why media often shy away from discussing Monetary Sovereignty and Gap Psychology opens a window to important social dynamics.
Media platforms typically depend on advertising revenue, influential connections, and maintaining good relationships with established institutions, which are often in the hands of the wealthy.
Embracing Monetary Sovereignty can significantly alleviate poverty and reduce the number of people in the underprivileged class. It invites us to rethink the fear surrounding “debt,” challenges the misplaced idea of federal “fiscal responsibility,” and shows how austerity measures can disproportionately affect the less fortunate.
Gap Psychology encourages us to look beyond surface-level budget debates and reveals the underlying power dynamics at play.
Unfortunately, the media sometimes frame government deficits as analogous to household debt, celebrating “hard choices” that often place a heavier burden on those who are struggling.
By understanding these concepts, we can foster a more equitable dialogue for all.
Why schools avoid it
The very wealthy contribute to schools through endowments, which leads these institutions to treat money as a scarce resource. This approach blurs the distinction between the issuer and the user of money, while also avoiding discussions about political economics.
If students were taught about Monetary Sovereignty, they might begin to ask important questions, such as, “Why do we allow poverty?” “Why is healthcare limited?” and “Why is Social Security so inadequate and taxed?”
Those questions are dangerous in a system built on the convenient myth that the poor are lazy slackers who, if given help, would refuse to work.
Discussions about Obamacare were never truly about healthcare or federal debt. They focused on whether the federal government should bypass arbitrary budget constraints, whether inequality is essential for “fiscal discipline,” and whether the wealth Gap can be narrowed without moral decline.
Monetary Sovereignty says “yes”, while Gap Psychology tells that many individuals negatively impacted by federal spending limits have been conditioned to accept these limits as necessary.
SUMMARY
Monetary Sovereignty explains what is possible. Gap Psychology explains why it is resisted.
Everything else—“unfunded,” “hard choices,” “belt-tightening,” “taxpayer money”—is narrative scaffolding built to protect the rich from the rest.
That’s not economics. That’s the sociology of a dictatorship.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Today’s question: Why would any nation give a tax break to religion but not to science and education?
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A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 