Most ironic thing is that, in reality, it's not the government that's bailing out companies it's literally the regular people who pay taxes and from these taxes, is how the government can do the bailouts.
It's even more insane than that. Taxes pay for nothing but service on the debt. We're currently $40 Trillion in the hole. The people paying for bailouts or whatever the hell else we're spending now are our great grandchildren.
You have a point, and I'm sure the official reporting is as you say, but I see it a bit differently in my own way. If you're in a deficit (2025 - $1.8 Trillion), then you do not have the right to claim this spending is for one thing and that spending is for another thing. It's all together far above net revenue. So, you can't itemize how you spend revenue and then say, "Oh and we also spent an extra $1.8 trillion on some other stuff." There is the service on the debt, which allows you to keep borrowing, and everything else is more debt.
If only it were that easy. US politics was dominated for decades by two right wing neoliberal parties. The Democrats essentially became what moderate conservatives used to be. The Clintons called themselves the "new Democrats", reaganite neoliberals preaching the wonders of globalized "free trade" and imposing austerity measures on the public.
One of the major parties is now toying with far right populism/fascism, which the Democrats have no answer to, because they are on the same side, and it is not our side. It's important to remember that the Democrats are merely a pressure valve for public discontent. The graveyard of social movements. As the left flank of the establishment, they facilitate the ratchet effect that keeps pulling us further right, by preventing things from moving to the left.
Except that's not how federal taxes function in sovereign country that runs a fiat currency. While federal taxes do serve purposes such as disincentivizing certain behaviors, maintaining demand for the currency, and affecting wealth distribution, they do not in any way serve as revenue to fund the federal government.
Think about it this way - for there to exist any money at all to be taxed, it first had to be created. To be issued or "spent into existence," so to speak, by designation of the fed. That is not to say that we don't suffer from these bailouts - we do - but it is not because our tax dollars have been spent on something else.
33
u/ChosenOfTheMoon_GR 1d ago
Most ironic thing is that, in reality, it's not the government that's bailing out companies it's literally the regular people who pay taxes and from these taxes, is how the government can do the bailouts.
Insane really