"Taxpayer dollars" is a bigoted trope designed precisely to get us thinking as individuals apart from society and not as members of a community.

Read this @MotherJones piece from Camille Walsh, author of RACIAL TAXATION. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/04/taxpayer-dollars-the-origins-of-austeritys-racist-catchphrase/

For those among us trying to build a more just, less violent, more egalitarian society, with universal healthcare, mass mobilization against climate change, and an end to homelessness, there is NO UPSIDE to using the dishonest "taxpayer" archetype.

None. https://twitter.com/JamesRobichaux/status/1309144718492815364?s=20

"Taxpayer" is, by design, a resentment-generating term of exclusion.

It implies the existence of some untaxed other and, much more importantly but much less appreciated, also implies the existence of some "taxeater," some leech or mooch.

The "taxpayer" archetype is designed not so much to favor "people who pay taxes" as it is to favor people who have the greatest capacity to pay taxes. That's why it doesn't work when you use it to argue that rich people don't pay enough taxes. https://twitter.com/JamesRobichaux/status/1368633963879817216?s=20

Don't you want rich people to pay more taxes?

Yes?

Well, then, if you use "taxpayer" archetype to argue for rich people paying more taxes, now you've created a situation in which THEY are seen as society's benefactors, THEY are funding everything, that we have THEM to thank.

Even if the people screaming "tax the rich and corporations to fund everything" don't understand that the mantra is nothing but a huge and vacuous self own, I can promise you that rich people, corporations, and their bought politicians understand it. https://twitter.com/SenJohnKennedy/status/1357487234560180226?s=20

The "taxpayer" archetype thus benefits bigots and rich people and no one else. Ostensibly progressive people who use the archetype to argue for a more inclusive society are poisoning their own causes and should be treated as such. https://twitter.com/JamesRobichaux/status/1368652768714649603?s=20

If you argue "I pay taxes" as a way of asserting that your opinion should be taken seriously by others and by the government, you are implicitly crapping on EVERYONE below you in the social hierarchy, everyone who'd most benefit from universal healthcare and housing as a right.

"Taxpayer" doesn't mean that the person pays taxes so much as it means that the person is a "net payer," paying more in taxes than one receives in valued government benefits.

"Taxeaters" may pay taxes, but they are perceived as being paid more in services than they "pay into."

With universal healthcare, most people would receive more money's worth of healthcare in a lifetime than he or she would pay taxes in a lifetime.

There is no problem with that.

But there is for as long as the "taxpayer" myth has primacy in a society.

The "taxpayer" archetype and myth is immeasurably more valuable for OPPONENTS of social welfare policies than it is for proponents of social welfare policies, and THEY KNOW IT.

That's all.

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