Thread by @sdgrumbine, Some basics.The US Dollar is a tax credit.It is a unit of [...]

Some basics.

The US Dollar is a tax credit.
It is a unit of measure.
You can't run out of inches
You can't run out of numbers
The government can't run out of dollars...
unless it purposely, politically chooses to.

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Since the US Dollar is a mere tax credit and a unit of measure, it is neither precious nor permanent.

A dollar is an IOU.
When it is spent into existence a debt is born.
When it is taxed out of existence a debt is washed away.

All money is debt.
So reducing the national debt means reducing the national money supply.

Dollars are not reused
A dollar is spent once into existence.
It circulates within the economy
Is destroyed once it is returned as a tax.
More precisely, it drains reserves at the Fed and destroyed.
There is *NO* PRINTING MONEY!!!!

Congressional spending is simply marking up accounts and taxation is marking them down.
Dollars are constantly created and constantly destroyed daily. DAILY!!!!

There is no such thing as paying for programs.
The government neither has nor doesn't have dollars.

Dollars are created every time the government seeks to provision itself and deposits are made into their account for spending... via keystrokes on a keyboard.

Dollars are deleted, destroyed, shredded when received as a tax.

Get it?

So why are we always talking about the government going broke?

Why are we always talking about reducing the deficit or lowering the debt?

The National Debt is merely: wait for it...

The sum total, to the penny, of every untaxed dollar in existence since the start of the nation.

To pay off the debt is to DELETE, Destroy EVERY dollar in the economy.

What kind of knuckle head would push that?

What programs are we missing out on because people do not know this?

Why do people think that taxes fund federal programs?

Being the "richest" country in the world is not about dollars... it's about available REAL RESOURCES.

Not $€£¥₩

Why do people make up stories about the end of the dollar or make up tales from the bar stool about the end of the world reserve currency? The nonsense about the Petrodollar??? Why do they do it???

The lie is so pervasive and systematically reinforced in our sitcoms, magazines, media, churches work place, community associations and political parties, unplugging from economic illiteracy is a herculean task but one that must be destroyed every moment of every day.

As we watch the deep freeze sweep the nation and people die from exposure... remember the people who claimed we needed to reduce the debt and deficit and who refused to advance a bold progressive agenda.

Remember them all.

The dead have no voice.

We must be their megaphone.

double entry accounting demands an asset be tallied. So the otherside of the debt is a private sector asset on the balance sheet. The debt Is an IOU and the asset is a tax credit.

"If state spending is printing money, then federal taxation is unprinting money"

(Thanks @wbmosler )

#LearnMMT #EachOneTeachOne #federaljobguarantee #greennewdeal #nopaygo #wearetherevolution #realprogressives

An important distinction exists between the currency issuer & currency users..
The Federal Government is the currency issuer. It has no means to live beyond. It creates money at will when Congress authorizes it.

States, counties and non sovereign zones such as the Euro adopters are revenue constrained. So pushing for state based initiatives that should be paid for Federally have a very different constraint. States and individuals cannot spend without borrowing, earning or taxing (gov).

To make this distinction look at this snippet from a Rodger Malcolm Mitchell article on Monetary Sovereignty

Heck, in 1946, NY Fed Chair Beardsley Ruml understood this even but the purveyors of the Mont Pelerin Society and later the Powell Memo and libertarian and right-wing think tanks made neoliberalism God. And eradicated knowledge of "the public purse" from the discourse of society