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Richard Murphy has written a book called The Joy of Tax, where one of the central arguments is that the generally accepted view of tax playing the role of funding government expenditure is incorrect, or at the very least, undesirable. Instead we ought to view tax as being a tool which acts as a force of contraction in the economy, taking money out of circulation that has been put there as a result of government spending. Both of these (fiscal) mechanisms - spending and taxing - ideally act as a mechanism to democratise the economy. 'Ideally' in the sense that the mechanisms for choosing and applying such policies are democratic, rather than authoritarian, subject to capture, etc. 'Democratise' in the sense that without this intervention, the 'market' has free reign - with ensuing consequences that influence over it is not in the hands of the many. Libertarians (especially of the free-market ilk) may see this as a positive, however, I think it is plainly obvious that a market is never free, and has a tendency to concentrate wealth (and thus power). In my opinion, decisions over our collective efforts and available resources ought not to be in the hands of the few, but rather, in the many - via truly democratic mechanisms and institutions. Some interesting, related vids that discuss boom/bust, QE and the like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5Ac7ap_MAY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk |