I'm not necessarily advocating this, more of a thought experiment. What if the government defined a level of revenue and just printed that amount of money? There would be no borrowing or taxing. The negatives I see are obviously some degree devaluation of the dollar. Perhaps the amount printed could be pegged to a percentage of GDP so this doesn't get out of control. The benefit would be the greatly enhanced efficiency and productivity of a tax-free economy.
It would be a tax on wealth instead of a tax on income. It would cause inflation that would dis-incentivize saving. Probably a very bad idea.
At the end of the day inflation happens when the amount of money chasing goods/services grows more quickly than the number of number of goods/services available. So theoretically...it could work (and no inflation would ensue) if for every dollar the government printed, there was a corresponding increase in economic output for consumers to buy. IMHO, that's highly unlikely.
Tax free efficiency is overrated. Ultimately, the government will figure out ways to tax who they want what they want when they want by masking taxes.
I'm pretty sure abolishing taxes would free all the magic unicorns from the gloomy dungeons of the Fed, then the magical unicorns will jump over fluffy rainbows and everyone will get a warm basket of puppies.
hao many peasants voted to paid higher taxes to emporurs and kangs........cant believe people vote fur higher taxes
How many "emporurs and kangs" provided education, roads, electricity, clean water, defense, security, fire defense, vaccinations, etc. for their peasants?
What if there were no hospitals, paid police force, schools or well-paved roads? How productive would we be without an energy, transportation or communication infrastructure? Without a continuous stream of income, would our government be more inclined to invade or colonize other countries for economic gain, or less?
Off the top of my head, I'm wondering how this is different from taxes. By creating a fixed amount of money out of thin air, wouldn't the government basically devalue every person's money by that amount? Say the government print an extra 10% of GDP for public use. Then my money would only be worth 10/11 as much as before. Hence basically a 9% tax on my income.
Actually it would be a tax on your wealth. Any funding scheme is going to have a cost. The question is how to fund the government and maximize economic growth.
Then why not just have a flat tax on people based on their wealth? Seems a bit pointless to make this roundabout way of taxation that results in the same thing. But even then, it's utterly pointless because people with the biggest wealth are hiding their money offshores anyway. So it's not like you can end up forcing people to spend money.
