Here is a scam that even those who understand Monetary Sovereignty will fall for:
News article: President Donald Trump says the government might start cutting checks again, but this time, not for COVID-19 relief or tax refunds. Instead, the money could come straight from the tariffs his administration has slapped on foreign imports.
In his words, “We have so much money coming in, we’re thinking about a little rebate.”
And by “little,” he means from a pool of more than $100 billion in tariff revenue already collected this year.
Sounds good, right? Some of the dollars those tariffs are taking out of your pocket will come back in the form of rebates. What could be wrong with that?
This illustration actually exaggerates the impact of tariffs on the federal government’s ability to spend. The ocean doesn’t contain an infinite amount of water, but the government can create an infinite number of dollars.
It’s 100% misleading.
There is no “pool of tariff revenue.” The federal government has infinite dollars.
Every dollar that comes to the government disappears into an infinite pool of funds.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally.
The St. Louis Fed: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
If Trump wanted to send a “rebate” to Americans, he could do it tomorrow, simply by having his acquiescent Congress vote for it.
There, quite literally. is no limit to how much the federal government can send to anyone and everyone, today, tomorrow, or any time.
Then there is this nonsense:
The US government is raising record-high revenue from tariffs, thanks to President Donald Trump’s embrace of new import levies. The White House may exaggerate the potential, but independent budget analysts agree the new tariffs may bring trillions of additional dollars into government coffers over a decade.
The United States government has the potential to collect US$2trn or more in tariff revenue for its coffers in the next decade from President Donald Trump’s new import levies, according to economic and budget researchers.
Since his second presidential term began in January, Trump has ordered a series of new import tariffs on a global, per-country and per-item basis. Among the president’s stated goals is to raise enough money to offset, or even eliminate, federal income taxes.
The independent analyses do not envision any possibility that tariffs, even under the highest plausible outcome, can replace the income tax. The US collects approximately US$2trn in income taxes annually.
There are no “coffers.”
This situation is similar to the ocean boasting about a tiny thimbleful of water being added to it.
However, that analogy isn’t quite accurate because even the ocean doesn’t have an infinite supply of water, while the U.S. government has an unlimited capacity to create dollars.
The government has the power to create a trillion, trillion, trillion dollars today, if it chooses to, simply by pressing a computer key.
Therefore, the government does not need to “raise” money to eliminate federal income taxes; it could eliminate those taxes immediately.
And this:
Howard Lutnick: “The tariff revenues are amazing — $700 BILLION a year. That’s just net new money the government never had before. You take that for ten years, that’s $7 TRILLION.”
An abject lie. The federal government has infinite money. The mythical $7 TRILLION would be taken from the private sector and disappear.
The purpose of federal income taxes is not to supply the federal government with money. Instead, the purposes of federal taxes are:
To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage (Examples: “Sin taxes on cigarettes, liquor, etc.) and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward (Examples: Tax breaks for charitable contributions, and tax loopholes for the rich.)
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring dollars to be used for tax payments.
Unlike state and local governments, which rely on tax dollars, the federal government does not need or use tax revenue.
Rather than taking tariff dollars from the public, the federal government should simply vote to eliminate poverty by funding comprehensive, no-deductible health care insurance and generous Social Security benefits for every man, woman, and child in America.
No, this wouldn’t cause inflation any more than Trump’s so-called “rebates” would. Inflation is caused by a shortage of essential goods and services, and it can be alleviated through federal spending to address those shortages.
At long last, when will the media, the politicians, and the economists acknowledge the federal government’s infinite supply of dollars?
You can’t blame the public for not understanding economics when economists themselves struggle to comprehend it.
Here are excerpts from two articles that demonstrate the incredible ignorance (or perhaps, intentional misleadingness) from people who should (or perhaps do) know better.
The first is from Paul Krugman, who is billed as having won the Nobel Prize (He didn’t. It was the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ).
The following article ran July 3, 2025.
Trump’s Big Beautiful Debt Bomb
The budget bill is both devastatingly cruel and deeply irresponsiblePaul Krugman, Jul 03, 2025Do readers remember the debt panic of the early Obama years? For a while scare stories about national debt dominated discussion in the media and inside the Beltway.
I got a lot of grief at the time for bucking that consensus, urging people to relax about government debt. The United States, I argued, had lots of “fiscal space” — ability to run up debt without losing investor confidence — so it should focus instead on the importance of restoring full employment, which required running substantial deficits.
So far, so good. He was right to tell people to “relax about government debt.”
His argument, though, about “fiscal space” is troubling, because it hints that there are times when we don’t have “fiscal space, and should worry about government debt (which isn’t government and isn’t debt.)
The money is owned by the public, not by the government, and resides in Treasury Security deposits. If it were debt, the government would own the money and owe it to the creditors.
Depositing dollars into an account that you own — dollars you always own and the government never touches — does not create “government debt.” (Think of a safe deposit box, and you will have a better understanding of Treasury Securities accounts.)
These days, however, many though not all of the people who were screaming about debt back then have gone quiet. Funny how that happens when there’s a Republican in the White House.
Republicans scream about benefits for the poor and taxes on the rich. Funny how “solutions” to the debt always seem to involve cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, childcare, and other benefits enjoyed by those who are not rich.
You never hear about the elimination of tax loopholes that benefit the rich.
Yet there is much more reason to be worried about debt now than there was then. On one side, there’s no longer any good economic reason to be running large deficits.
That statement is utterly wrong, diametrically wrong, even more wrong than the notion that Krugman won a real Nobel Prize.
The reasons to run large deficits never change and are quite obvious:
Being Monetarily Sovereign, the government canrun any size deficits at no cost to anyone — not to you, not to me, and not even to Paul Krugman. All deficit spending is funded not by taxes, but by the creation of new money, which the federal government can do endlessly.
The formula for economic growth clearly shows why the government must run deficits. Gross Domestic Product = Federal Spending + Nonfederal Spending+ Net Exports. Government deficits fund both bolded terms in the equation.
Every depression in U.S. history has resulted from the lack of federal deficits (aka “surpluses.”)
Almost all recessions have resulted from deficits that were too small, and all have been cured by increased deficit spending.
Here is the evidence:
Changes in Gross Domestic Product closely parallel changes in “federal debt.” Recessions are preceded by reduced “debt” growth and are cured by increased “debt” growth.
Every depression in U.S. history has followed years of federal surpluses:
1804-1812: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 48%. Depression began 1807.
1817-1821: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 29%. Depression began 1819.
1823-1836: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 99%. Depression began 1837.
1852-1857: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 59%. Depression began 1857.
1867-1873: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 27%. Depression began 1873.
1880-1893: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 57%. Depression began 1893.
1920-1930: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 36%. Depression began 1929.
1997-2001: U. S. Federal Debt reduced 15%. Recession began 2001.
On the other, America has changed in ways that have greatly reduced our fiscal space, our ability to get away with a high level of debt.
There is nothing to “get away with.” Not only is the “federal debt” not federal or debt, but running deficits is necessary. What we can’t afford to do is not to rundeficits.
And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which just passed the Senate and will probably pass the House, will make things even worse.
It is one of the worst bills ever to pass Congress and the President, but not because it causes deficits. That’s the good part. The bad part is that the entire bill is devoted to taking money from the low- and middle-income groups and giving it to the very rich.
Why was I relatively relaxed about debt back in the day? Largely because history tells us that advanced nations can normally run up large debts without experiencing crises of confidence that send interest rates soaring.
Look, for example, at the debt history of the UK, which ran up huge debts relative to GDP during the Napoleonic Wars and the two world wars without losing investor confidence:
Why are advanced countries normally able to pull this off?
Not all advanced countries — only those that are Monetarily Sovereign, like the UK. The euro nations, many of which could be called “advanced” (France, Germany, Italy, et al), cannot run up large debts without experiencing crises of confidence.
However, the Monetarily Sovereign European Union (EU) can incur any amount of debt it wishes without problems. It has the infinite ability to create euros.
First, they’re normally run by serious people, who don’t try to govern on the basis of crackpot economic doctrines and will take responsible action if necessary to stabilize their nations’ debt.
“Serious people”? Do you know what that means? I don’t.
Second, they’re competent: They have strong administrative states that can collect a lot of tax revenue if necessary. The United States collects 25 percent of GDP in taxes, but could collect much more if it chose. Some European nations collect more than 40 percent.
This is utterly wrong:
While state and local taxes dopay for state and local government spending, federal (Monetarily Sovereign) spending is not funded by taxes. Even if the U.S. federal government collected no taxes, it could continue spending indefinitely. Amazingly, the Nobel winner seems not to understand the differences between Monetary Sovereignty and monetary non-sovereignty.
Not only does federal tax collection not fund federal spending, but it reduces GDP by reducing non-federal spending. Federal tax collections are anti-growth.
These factors normally lead investors to give advanced countries the benefit of the doubt, even when they run big deficits. That is, investors assume that the people running these countries will take action to rein in debt once the emergency justifying deficits ends, and that they will be able to take effective action because they have effective governance.
No, smart investors know that Monetarily Sovereign nations easily can fund deficit spending by creating their sovereign currencies.
It isn’t emergencies that justify deficits; it’s economic growth that makes deficits necessary.
And what is the “effective action” Krugman is talking about? In the 65 years since 1960, there has been only one short period when America failed to run a deficit — 1998-2001 — and that caused the recession of 2001.
And, as usual, the recession was cured by — you guessed it — deficit spending.
Reductions in deficit growth (red line) lead to recessions (represented by gray vertical bars). Recessions are cured by increased deficit spending. The reason: Federal deficits, which never are funded by taxes, increase the supply of growth dollars in the economy, at no cost to anyone.
And that’s why I was a deficit dove in, say, 2011. America needed to run substantial deficits to recover from the 2008 financial crisis.
But I didn’t think this would cause trouble down the road, because we were a serious country run by serious people, easily able to do what was necessary to stabilize the debtonce the economic emergency was past.
Again, with the “serious” business? Serious people would understand Monetary Sovereignty.
We didn’t “stabilizethe debt.” We ran “substantial deficits to recover”, i.e., to grow the economy, after the 2008 financial crisis. (Why we should wait for a financial crisis to grow the economy, never is explained.)
We ran larger deficits than ever, which coincided with substantial GDP growth and low inflation.
But that, as I said, was then.
Right now we are running big budget deficits even though we aren’t fighting a war, facing high unemployment, or dealing with a pandemic. We should be taking action to bring those deficits down.
Why? What is the supposed harm that deficits are causing? There is none. Why turn off the engines when the plane is flying well?
Instead, Republicans have rammed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will add trillions to the deficit even as it causes mass misery.
I think he means “adding trillions to the debt,” but either way, this is one of the few good parts of the Bill — deficit spending to add growth dollars to the private sector.
The bad part is that not only with the rich get more money, but the poor will get less. When an economy widens the Gap between the rich and the rest, there always is much suffering among the millions while a few thousand prosper.
Money aside, the way Congress was bullied into passing that bill and the lies used to sell it show that we are no longer a serious country run by serious people.
Republicans are using transparently dishonest accounting to hide just how much they’re adding to debt — hey, we aren’t really cutting taxes, just extending tax cuts that were scheduled to expire.
And they’re also claiming that the OBBBA’s tax cuts (the ones that they say aren’t really happening) will generate a miraculous surge in economic growth.
If there were real tax cuts they would, in fact, stimulate economic growth. But Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy in two ways:
Tariffs are taxesthat remove dollars from the economy. We Americans pay Trump’s tariffs out of our pockets. Foreigners do not pay our taxes. Trump is hitting us on the head with a tariff hammer, to punish them.
Tariffs also are inflationary, affecting the prices of all products, even those not directly subject to a tariff.
I’ve had my differences with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, but it’s an honest, highly competent think tank, and its (appropriately) incredulous analysis of Trump officials’ economic projections is titled “CEA’s fantastical economic assumptions.”
The CRFB is honest and competent if you agree with their endless calls to cut benefits to the middle- and lower-income groups as a way to grow the economy. Otherwise, one might think they are a group of wealthy individuals catering to the greed of other wealthy individuals.
Add in Trump’s bizarro claims about what his tariffs will achieve. Again, do we look like a serious country run by serious people?
Moreover, mass deportation and incarceration of immigrants, aside from being a civil liberties nightmare, will inflict severe economic damage and significantly worsen our debt position.
Totally agree. Is this the same Donald Trump whose party complains Americans are not having enough children to support a growing economy — so he’s sending away immigrants who do the work and pay taxes, but receive few benefits??? Absolutely senseless.
Finally, how long will we have an effective government that can collect taxes when necessary? Elon Musk’s DOGE failed to find significant amounts ofwaste, fraud and abuse, but it did degrade the functioning of the federal government and demoralize hundreds of thousands of civil servants.
Like little puppets, the Republicans mouth the phrase “waste, fraud and abuse.” It’s always exactly the same — “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Never, “fraud, abuse, and waste.” Never “abuse, waste, and fraud.”
Always exactly the same words, which not only are symptoms of rehearsed madnessbut have also been proven untrue.
Republicans have done all they can to eviscerate the IRS and make tax evasion great again. Even if control of the government is eventually returned to people who want to govern the country rather than pillage it, it will take years to recover competence in taxing faith in America.
I don’t mourn for the IRS. Federal taxes pay for nothing at all. The sole purposes of federal taxes are:
To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by rewarding what the government wishes to encourage.
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring taxes be paid in dollarsl
To widen the Gap between the rich and the rest by providing tax loopholes only the rich can crawl through, allowing them to pay a lower percentage of their incomes than the rest of us do.
Get it? Federal taxes don’t fund federal spending.
But I don’t think they fully realize, even now, that the risk of a U.S. debt crisis is vastly higher now than it was when Republicans were yelling about Obama’s deficits.
There was no “debt crisis” then. There is no “debt crisis” now.
The issue is that we have a dangerous, hateful criminal as President, a group of unethical supporters in Congress and the Supreme Court, and a sufficient number of misinformed voters to enable it.
A concern of conservative Republicans is that the bill adds to both the national debt and deficit,Jackson Richman,Josep h Lord, Nathan Worcester, 7/2/2025
WASHINGTON—House Republicans appear stuck on July 2 when it comes to advancing President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
House Republicans are working overtime to bring their ideologically-divided caucus—split between moderates and conservatives who often want opposing outcomes—on board with the mammoth bill. With Republicans controlling 220 seats to Democrats’ 212, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can spare no more than three defections.
Here are some of the biggest unresolved divisions in the bill.
Pricetag
Many conservatives have expressed concerns about the bill’s impact on the national debt as well as the deficit.
“The changes the Senate made to the House passed Beautiful Bill, including unacceptable increases to the national debt and the deficit, are going to make passage in the House difficult,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) wrote on X.
Mathematically, they are talking about “unacceptable increases in Gross Domestic Product.” Crazy or ignorant? You decide.
The conservative Freedom Caucus said in an X post on June 30: “The Senate’s version adds $651 billion to the deficit—and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total. That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.”
It is not “fiscally responsible” to assume federal financing is the same as personal financing. How are people so ignorant of economics elected to Congress?
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a caucus member, told The Epoch Times on July 1 that he would vote against the legislation. Norman and other fiscal hawks have called for at least $2 trillion in spending cuts, while the bill delivers $1.5 trillion in cuts.
Translation: Norman and other fiscal hawks have called for at least $2 trillion in cuts to economic growth.
There are also concerns about the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) prediction of a $3.2 trillion deficit increase under the bill.
Translation: There are also concerns about the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) prediction of a $3.2 trillion increase in Gross Domestic Product
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) took a different perspective.
“People are going to have more money to spend, the economy is going to do well, and people are going to be happy,” Van Drew told reporters.
OMG! Is Van Drew the only member of Congress who understands that federal deficits put money into people’s pockets?
Johnson and Trump have argued that the bill will reduce the deficit by kindling economic growth and have criticized the CBO numbers for relying on a lower growth rate .
Translation: Johnson and Trump have argued that the bill will reduce the deficit by increasing taxes, which somehow will grow the economy.
Cut Provisions
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who also voted against advancing the bill through the House Rules Committee, posted on X that the Senate eliminated provisions passed in the House version of the legislation
This included getting rid of “provisions to terminate the ‘green new scam’ subsidies in the House bill,” removing “key provisions we put in the bill to stop illegal aliens from getting Medicaid,” and eliminating “key provisions we put in the bill to stop taxpayer funding of transgender surgeries.”
Translation: The government should spend fewer growth dollars to cut global warming and healthcare, but don’t cut tax loopholes for the rich.
The Freedom Caucus document alleges that the Senate watered down a House provision to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which issues food stamps, as “it fails to prevent blue states from gerrymandering counties and cities to get around the work requirements.”
There are those words again, in the exact order, as spoken by zombie puppets: “Waste, fraud, and abuse,” which DOGE failed to find.
Translation: Cut the food stamps that save children in blue states from starvation, because they help Democrats.
MedicaidWhile the Freedom Caucus sought deep Medicaid cuts, this is a concern for moderates such as Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). The Senate cut Medicaid by more than $1 trillion, while the House version cut it by $800 billion. Both figures are over the span of a decade.
Translation. Rep. Don Bacon is concerned about health, but he will vote for the bill because Trump told him to.
In a June 24 letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), a group of moderates wrote that the “House’s approach reflects a more pragmatic and compassionate standard.”
Translation: To Republicans, “pragmatic and compassionate” means cut healthcare, but a bit less.
They also wrote that they are “concerned about rushed implementation timelines, penalties for expansion states, changes to the community engagement requirements for adults with dependents, and cuts to emergency Medicaid funding” as “these changes would place additional burdens on hospitals already stretched thin by legal and moral obligations to provide care.”
Translation: Yes, cut all those benefits to the poor; just do it slower, until after the midterm elections.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), a leader in the moderate Main Street Caucus, said he and many other moderates had, nevertheless, had their concerns assuaged by their meeting with Trump.
Asked about the meeting, Johnson said Trump “and particularly [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator] Dr. [Mehmet] Oz did a good job of working through some of the specifics.”
“The president is the best closer in the business, and he got a lot of members to ‘Yes’ in that meeting,” he said.
Translation: “Concerns assuaged by Trump” means “he won’t campaign against me or put up a competing candidate.”
Rep. John McGuire (R-Va.), a supporter of the bill, said that Republicans’ changes to the currently “unsustainable” program will ensure that it’s “available for people who need it for future generations.”
Translation: McGuire falsely claims the government can run short of dollars, so we have to cut benefits to the poor while giving the rich more tax loopholes. And please don’t ask us to cut tax loopholes. Why do you think we cut IRS staffing?
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) told reporters: “We’re going after waste, fraud, and abuse. People shouldn’t be on the system who are not eligible.”
“Waste, fraud, and abuse,” again. All rich people are eligible. The people who do the actual labor are not eligible.
Additionally, an issue with the bill, according to the document, is that it does not phase out quick enough the green credits under the Inflation Reduction Act as it “guts the benefit by including a last-minute carveout for projects that ‘begin construction’ a year after enactment, which will create a race to do the minimum 5 percent construction spending to lock in subsidies well past 2027.”
Translation: Those Democrats will sneak in measures to reduce global warming if we don’t phase out benefits for those who pollute less. Anyway, global warming doesn’t exist, and if it does exist it isn’t a threat to the rich, so why should we care?
Finally, an issue with the bill, according to the document, is that it includes $50 billion for rural hospitals—which they call a “slush fund”—and a “100 percent tax deduction for meal expenses on Alaskan fishing boats, and special lower thresholds for waivers for Alaska for SNAP work requirements and state cost share requirements, even after giving them a blanket waiver through 2028.”
Translation: “How awful. How can we increase benefits for the rich if we help rural hospitals, provide deductions for meal expenses on fishing boats, and make it easier for starving children to get food?”
I don’t blame the Republicans or even Trump for this monstrosity of a bill — a bill that will sicken and starve millions of innocent people.
I blame the ignorant, cruel, un-American voters, who carry their bigotry and hatreds into the voting booth with them. They think the rich Republicans will protect America from the black, brown, yellow, gay, poor, lazy, non-Christian foreigners who are “trying to take over.”
The MAGA version of the Statue of Liberty doesn’t carry the welcoming torch of freedom. She gives the middle finger to all those self-proclaimed “good Christians,” who actually are polar opposites of Christ.
Ironically, poetically, the red-state voters who are not wealthy will suffer the most. I do not feel sympathy for them. They will receive what they deserve. deserve.
I feel bad for their children, who will be harmed by the wanton cruelty foisted upon them by their parents.
There are lies, damned lies, and then there is the federal budget.
Here is an article that appeared in the 6/19/2025 Florida Sun Sentinel:
Trump’s spending bill threatens democracy and federal deficit
By Steve Corbin, The Fulcrum
As a lifelong marketer and Consumer Behavior professor, it’s interesting to observe how people’s opinions change as details of an issue become more apparent.
That’s what we refer to as “learning,” Mr. Corbin.
Behavioral change – once information and knowledge increase – is common among people who are open-minded, educated, and critical thinker.
The author, Steve Corbin, clearly identifies himself as one of those individuals who values open-mindedness, education, and critical thinking. I believe he thinks that those who agree with him embody these same qualities as well. This sentiment is likely shared by many others.
It’s called “human nature.”
But I wonder how he feels about those who view much of his article as nonsense.
Here are additional excerpts from his article, along with my thoughts on the implication that the disapproval rating of the “Big Beautiful Bill” increased as citizens became more informed about its contents.
I consider that to be mostly nonsensical. The disapproval rating increased because Elon Musk and many economists criticized it. The masses followed where the leaders directed them.
Conduct your own survey by asking the next person you meet, “Do you like the bill? Why or why not?” You will likely receive vague responses such as, “It increases the debt,” or “It’s bad for the poor.”
These general statements only loosely relate to the specifics of the bill and are often more reflective of the individual’s feelings toward Trump than an informed understanding of the bill itself.
Besides the megabill projecting to increase America’s budget deficit by $2.4 trillion, citizens’ top 10 concerns are noted below.
The most disconcerting aspect of the omnibus bill is listed last, as it undermines the checks and balances system that ensures separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches Americans have revered for the past 250 years.
“Increasing the budget deficit by $2.4 trillion is more properly stated,” “Increases the federal government’s support for economic growth by $2.4 trillion.”
Without federal deficit spending, the economy would enter a recession, and even more likely, a depression.
In either case, recession or depression, the ONLY cure would be massive federal deficit spending.
Corbin fails to challenge the common myth about deficits, and his mention of it as a concern only spreads misinformation.
1) Medicaid:At least $600 billion will be cut from Medicaid, which will strip health care coverage from an estimated 10-15 million low-income Americans and close down over 300 rural hospitals (CHOPR).
True, the bill mandatesit, but Corbin implies that it is necessary. Without collecting a penny in taxes, the federal government could fund comprehensive, generous Medicare (not just Medicaid) for everyone in America.
Congress and the President could achieve this simply by voting. Two votes, one from the Senate and one from the House, followed by the President’s signature, and the necessary funds would be available.
2) Taxes: The measure has a reverse-Robin Hood scenario that extends and expands tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, while lower-income earners would see reduced benefits or a net income loss; the estimated cost is around $3.8-$4.3 trillion during the 2025-2034 time period.
Mr. Corbin neglects to mention that while federal taxes can be a burden on the economy, they do not fund federal spending. The primary purposes of federal taxes are:
To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring that taxes be paid in dollars.
The major function of federal taxes today is to widen the income/power/Gap between the rich donors and the rest of us. Let me put this in bold, all-caps, so there will be no misunderstanding.”
FEDERAL TAXES DO NOT FUND FEDERAL SPENDING
State and local taxes fund state and local government spending, so Mr. Corbin is either unaware of this fact or dishonest. There are no other possibilities.
3) SNAP: Spending on SNAP, America’s food assistance program for low-income earners and the disabled, will be slashed by $267 billion, affecting the food security of 7.4 million people (Center on Budget and Policy).
In this context, we discuss morality. Many individuals who do not rely on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) tend to lack concern for low-income workers. Those who are better off often view those in need as lazy or irresponsible, thinking they seek free handouts to spend on drugs and weapons.
Too many people who identify as Christians are CINOs (Christians In Name Only). They often contradict Jesus’s teachings and misquote the Bible to justify selfishness, harshness, and bigotry.
If it cost you nothing, would you help a starving, poor child? SNAP is a program that costs you and your fellow taxpayers nothing and helps millions of the starving poor. Mr. Corbin never mentions that.
4) Estate Taxes: The estate tax exemption would be raised and indexed for inflation, allowing wealthy families to pass on up to $30 million tax-free to their heirs, resulting in $200 billion in lost revenue to the U.S. Treasury.
The estate tax is a woefully inadequate, poorly designed, quasi-attempt to mollify the masses by pretending to punish the rich.
It mostly doesn’t work, but in the few cases it does work, it punishes the private sector by removing dollars from the economy.
Instead of making insincere efforts to penalize the wealthy, a more effective approach would be to support those who are less fortunate. Funding initiatives like Medicare for All, Education for All, Food for All, and Housing for All can ultimately improve the lives of everyone.
That, after all, is the purpose of government — the reason why we voluntarily submit ourselves to the government’s rule-making.
5) Clean Energy:The elimination of tax incentives for solar, wind, and electric vehicles ($561 billion) will affect approximately 250,000 Americans working in these sectors (CNBC).
The government is utilizing tax laws as intended: to regulate the economy. Unfortunately, the oil and coal industries contribute more money in bribes to Congress, leading Congress to favor fossil fuels over renewable energy sources, which exacerbates global warming.
To make their position more acceptable to the general public, right-wing individuals often deny the existence of global warming. If they do admit that it exists, they argue that humans are not responsible for it. Even if they acknowledge human responsibility, they claim that there is nothing we can do to address the issue due to the actions of China.
And anyway, the election was stolen.
6) Private Education: A new tax credit for donations to private school voucher programs expands federal support for private education. FYI: The majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, support increasing funding for public schools over private school vouchers (Center for American Progress).
Most funding for education comes from sources that do not have monetary sovereignty, such as states, counties, cities, villages, businesses, and private individuals. As a result, funding is limited, which, not coincidentally, contributes to the growing gaps in income, wealth, and power between the rich and others.
As though that Gap were not wide enough, there is another Gap-widening effort. The Christion-right’s continual attempts to widen the Gap between them and everyone else, even those not among the Christian-right.
Let Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, agnostics, and even non-fundamentalist Christians beware.
The money solution lies in the source of money, the federal government. Federal financial support for all education — Pre-K through advanced degrees.
America’s current system creates dramatically underpaid teachers and administrators, which results in excellent schooling for the wealthiest few, and terrible schooling for the rest. That, of course, is all part of the Gap-widening plan.
7) State and Local Tax (SALT):The tax deduction cap would be raised to $40,000, benefiting wealthier households in high-taxed states for $916 billion (Reuters).
Federal taxes should be reduced, but increasing tax deductions for the wealthy is not the solution. Instead, the federal government should make direct payments to all.
Consider it this way: If a wealthy individual falls into the 36% tax bracket, they effectively “benefit” from 36% of the $40,000 SALT deduction, which amounts to about $14,000. Instead of giving each affluent family $14,000, the government should provide every family with $14,000, tax-free.
8) Post-Secondary Education:Federal subsidized loans for college students will be eliminated and Pell Grant eligibility tightened, making post-secondary education less accessible for many, especially for students from low- and middle-income families (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
Education is essential for the future of Americans, which is why the founders of this nation established free primary education for most citizens, a practice that continues today.
However, the current world needs our nation to provide more than primary and even secondary education.
The rich don’t need the loans. The poor can’t pay them back.
The federal government has infinite dollars and destroys all the dollars it receives. Paying the government back does nothing for the government, but it impoverishes millions of Americans.
Instead of doing the right thing — i.e. cancel all the debt and fund college for every student — the government does exactly the wrong thing. It continues to collect on the loans, but cancels future financial support.
Why? Because the current administration is more focused on widening the Gap between the rich and the rest than any in history. And Mr. Corbin goes along with the Lie.
Is it ignorance of malevolence? You decide.
9) Environment:The proposal expands leasing of public lands for drilling, mining, and logging and authorizes the sale of public lands, reversing environmental protectionssupported by the majority of Americans.
Hey, who cares about our environment when there’s money to be made? Mr. Corbin is correct to mention this disaster.
10) Judicial Oversight (Section 70302): This provision, described in a single paragraph buried about halfway through the act, restricts judges’ ability to enforce court orders and weakens judicial authority over the executive branch.
The impact on democracy of the 10th identified component of Trump’s legislation justifies further explanation.
This provision restricts the ability of federal courts to enforce their rulings against the government and impose contempt of court citations.
This is significant because this clause means judges would have a much more difficult time holding Trump and his appointees, as well as future presidencies, in contempt for defying preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders, thereby severely impacting the rule of law.
I’m not sure why Mr. Corbin is so shocked about this. The Supreme Court already has opened that barn door by ruling that Trump can do any damn thing he wants so long as he can claim it’s part of his job.
Arrest a Congressperson? No problem. Handcuff a mayoral candidate? OK, so long as the candidate is a Democrat. Lie, cheat steal, violate the Emoluments clause and make billions from the Presidency? Who cares?
We already have a convicted felon for a President, so why does Mr. Corbin think contempt of Congress would be a deterrent, or even possible with this Congress and SCOTUS?
Legal experts warn that this provision significantly undermines judicial authority and renders many existing and future court orders unenforceable. This stipulation undermines America’s checks and balances between the three branches of government, a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution.
“Checks and balances”? Mr. Corbin must be kidding.
Section 70302 alone in the measure says that democracy is in jeopardy for you, your children, and your grandchildren. If the bill passes with section 70302 intact, an authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist-oriented America is almost assured in perpetuity.
You get what you vote for. Trump made no secret about who and what he is. And still he won the election.
Are people going to complain about “authoritarianism, totalitarianism, fascism,” and the misinformation surrounding Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, Social Security, the environment, global warming, and countless other problems that a wise government could address?
Nah. As long as we, the people, can stand by while ICE kicks in doors to deport innocent, valuable immigrants, and we, the people, bar anyone who isn’t a white Christian, why should we worry about unimportant issues like facts and voting?
Right, Steve?
Steve Corbin is a Professor Emeritus of Marketing, University of Northern Iowa, and a non-paid freelance opinion editor and guest columnist contributor to 246 news agencies and 48 social media platforms in 45 states.
In previous posts, we have defined “consciousness” as the response to stimuli. See, for instance, “‘What if,'” the way creativity begins and consciousness is measured.”
All of my articles about consciousness and time, and the latter article, were precipitated by quantum “weirdness,” the discovery that quantum particles can be in multiple states and places simultaneously and, when “entangled,” can affect each other’s states instantly, no matter how far apart they are.
The words “simultaneously” and “instantly” reveal the effect of time on quantum mechanics as well as on Relativity.
Welcome To The World of Consciousness: A Universal Hypothesis of Time and Response
For centuries, consciousness has been considered a uniquely human trait. It has been linked to self-awareness, language, and even morality.
But what if this assumption was never true? What if consciousness is not a binary quality possessed only by certain minds, but rather a universal property, evident wherever there are stimuli and responses?
In this view, consciousness is not owned. It is measured. It is not metaphysical. It is emergent. And it is not exclusive to humans. It is everywhere, even in things that are not recognized for having a brain.
Consciousness as Response
At its most basic, consciousness is the degree of responsiveness to stimuli over time. A rock, a worm, a person, and a computer each are exposed to stimuli and respond in some way. The difference lies not in kind, but in degree.
Humans may respond richly, a fly more simply, a stone infinitesimally—but all lie on the same spectrum.
This reframing strips consciousness of its mystical baggage. It no longer requires vaguely imagined properties. (“I can’t say exactly what it is, but I know it when I see it.”)
It requires only that a system change in reaction to its environment.
It answers such questions as, “Which of these is conscious?”
A sleeping person? A fetus? A newborn child? A person in a coma? A person with parasomnias? A chimpanzee? A dog? A bottlenose porpoise? A bee? An ant? A tree? A bacterium? A stone? The moon? The sum? The universe?
The answer is that all of them possess some degree of consciousness.It’s chemistry and physics, not metaphysics. The only questions one must answer are: “What stimuli does each receive and how does each respond?”
Of course, “only” is a word that makes the problem sound trivial when it is quite the opposite.
Awareness And Judgment
To respond meaningfully, a system must, at some level, be aware of the stimulus. A thermostat “notices” temperature and adjusts. A bee notices intruders and attacks. An artificial intelligence detects words and replies with a programmed meaning.
This basic form of awareness is structural, not sentient in the traditional sense, but it is awareness nonetheless.
Judgment then emerges as a pattern of selective response. The bee targets, the thermostat calibrates, and the AI ranks, filters, and generates. The tree bends toward the light and responds to chemicals in the soil.
Bacteria use quorum sensing to form a biofilm. They are aware of, and even can count, the number of similar bacteria surrounding them, and if a certain number is reached, they decideto form a biofilm.
The words “aware of,” “count,” and “decide” all imply some measure of consciousness.
The moon alters its orbit in response to the sun, the Earth, and meteors.
All are conscious of stimuli and respond. Conscious and respond in time. Humans do all this too, but with more memory and complexity, not with any unique capacity.
Speaking of “sentient in the traditional sense,” this, often falsely, is thought of as some indescribable capacity beyond physics and chemistry, a unique, otherworldly ability we humans have.
It is none of those. It is chemistry and physics, as the following excerpts from the May 10, 2025, issue of New Scientist Magazine demonstrate.
Given a choice between two sea snail shells, hermit crabs know which will make a better home. That is, unless their thinking has been muddled by ingesting microplastics.
Then, they struggle with a decision that could be crucial for survival. They aren’t alone: across the animal kingdom, it appears, tiny bits of plastic change behaviours and mess up cognition.
Exposure to these particles makes mice more forgetful and less social. Bees have trouble learning. Zebrafish act more anxious.
“If you turn the top of your plastic bottle, you shower tiny pieces of plastic down into the water,” says Tamara Galloway, an ecotoxicologist at the University of Exeter, UK.
Thus, molecules of plastic affect knowledge, thinking, decision-making, behavior, cognition, memory, sociability, learning, and emotions, even in the “lowest” of creatures.
No magic to sentience, consciousness, awareness, or judgement. Just physics and chemistry to which everything responds.
Emotion As Distributed Reaction
Emotions are often cited as the barrier separating man and machine. But this only holds if we define emotions narrowly, as mysterious feelings rather than physical functions.
Redefined, emotion is just a non-local, distributed reaction to a localized stimulus.
You are stung by a bee and feel localized pain along with anger that affects your entire body. A dog hears a single tone and eagerly anticipates food; a wasp perceives a threat, and the swarm attacks.
These are not feelings in the poetic sense, but patterns of system-wide changetriggered by inputs. Under this model, even artificial systems can manifest something like emotion: a wide array of state changes, cascading across modules in response to one small command.
If an AI were given a four-letter swear word and programmed to respond with the words, “Same to you,” then shut down, that would be a sign of emotion, indistinguishable from nature programming you to respond with anger.
Preference and Visualization
Preference is a structured tendency toward certain responses over others. Flies prefer rot; humans prefer perfume. A professor might prefer coherent logic to broken syntax.
These are not mystical tastes. They are responses, guided by chemistry and physics. A huge enough block of matter floating in space prefers to be round rather than angular.
Visualization, or the proactive response to imagined stimuli, is simply a higher-order function of memory and prediction. Animals do it. Humans do it more. AIs do it algorithmically.
And while a rock may not visualize in this sense, its weathering patterns represent time-mediated adaptation and time-shaped change.
Time: The Inducing Field
Consciousness is responsiveness, and time is the medium in which consciousness unfolds. Just as the Higgs field induces mass, the temporal field facilitates change, and thus responsiveness, and thus consciousness.
Time is not a passive backdrop but the enabler of variation. Without time, there is no change, no stimulus, no reaction, no consciousness.
The relationship between time and consciousness is suggested in the following excerpts:
Could consciousness be the fundamental force that shapes everything?
This idea challenges the conventional view that matter came first, suggesting instead that consciousness might be the building block of reality itself.
Imagine if every thought and every emotion were not just personal experiences but were woven into the very fabric of the cosmos. Such a notion invites us to rethink what we know about the universe and our place within it.
Materialists argue that consciousness arises from physical processes within the brain, while idealists believe that consciousness precedes and gives rise to matter. The idea that consciousness might be a universal force offers a tantalizing twist, suggesting that perhaps both sides have been missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.
Quantum physics has long fascinated scientists with its mysterious and counterintuitive findings. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that consciousness might play a role in the behavior of particles at the smallest scales. The observer effect, for instance, implies that the mere act of observation can alter the outcome of a quantum event.
Einstein spoke of a four-dimensional universe, which he called “space-time,” three dimensions of space and one of time. Could there be one more dimension: Consciousness?
It would be consciousness-space-time.
All entities, macro and quantum, are measured in space, time, and consciousness. Depending on size, these three variables have different importance.
For the most massive objects — stars, black holes, galaxies — we tend to focus on the space-time measure. For the tiniest objects, we focus on consciousness-time.
We are accustomed to entities moving through space. It is how we move each day. We are less accustomed to entities moving through time — as Einstein revealed– because we do not sense that motion, except for barely detectable responses at near light speed and even tinier responses at slower speeds.
And we have recently detected objects changing via consciousness, which moderates the maximum amount of knowledge we can have about a quantum particle. Considered as a unit, consciousness+space+time tells us all we can know.
A Continuum, Not a Wall
The greatest error of human exceptionalism has been to draw a line where there is only a slope. From stones to stars, from bees to brains, from humans to machines—consciousness is not a switch, but a gradient, and time is the field in which they function.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 