You have fallen prey to the “ecological fallacy”—the assumption that some property of a group (in this case, US taxpayers as a whole) must also be true of each individual within the group.
If I, personally, saved $100 in taxes because of deficit spending, then who, personally, pays that $100 back with interest? I might not have children. They might be in a different tax bracket, such that their putative repayment is not proportional to my putative borrowing. The country might let in lots of immigrants, thereby reducing my children’s share of the tax burden. The country could in the future derive less federal tax revenue from personal income tax and more from other sources (corporate tax, import duties, lease of mining/drilling rights, carbon fees), muddying the waters further.
It is true that the $100 needs to be paid back somehow, from somewhere within the vast body of the US tax base—as Milton Friedman said, “to spend is to tax.” But that is very different from a debt in which I, as an individual, undertake to spend more now in exchange for spending less later.
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no subject
Date: 2021-09-26 09:41 pm (UTC)You have fallen prey to the “ecological fallacy”—the assumption that some property of a group (in this case, US taxpayers as a whole) must also be true of each individual within the group.
If I, personally, saved $100 in taxes because of deficit spending, then who, personally, pays that $100 back with interest? I might not have children. They might be in a different tax bracket, such that their putative repayment is not proportional to my putative borrowing. The country might let in lots of immigrants, thereby reducing my children’s share of the tax burden. The country could in the future derive less federal tax revenue from personal income tax and more from other sources (corporate tax, import duties, lease of mining/drilling rights, carbon fees), muddying the waters further.
It is true that the $100 needs to be paid back somehow, from somewhere within the vast body of the US tax base—as Milton Friedman said, “to spend is to tax.” But that is very different from a debt in which I, as an individual, undertake to spend more now in exchange for spending less later.