Voodoo Economics Again

Dean Baker is back at it again with his insane theories about the reason and need for taxes. He tells us again yesterday that, “the federal government doesn’t need revenue to spend, it prints money.”

You don’t need income when you can print money. The deficit and federal debt are meaningless, which would lead a person with an IQ higher than room temperature to wonder why we keep track of that debt, and why Congress imposes spending limits.

Adding to the spending limit mystery, of course, is that every time we reach that limit Congress raises it, which would lead a thinking person to wonder why it exists. Not to worry, though, as there aren’t any thinking persons in this nation.

So why do we have taxes? We have them, according to Dean Baker, “to reduce consumption, so as to create the economic space for spending.”

Okay, think about that for a moment. No one does, because thinking is extinct in this nation. Taxes exist purely to prevent you from spending your own money on what you want to buy, which is what “consumption” is, so as to “create economic space for spending.”

Spending by whom? They are taking money from us to prevent us from spending it in order to “create space for spending.” How is that anything more than mere gibberish?

And, if Baker’s argument is valid, why are all of the Democratic candidates talking about the new forms of taxes they are going to create, given that today’s problem is an inability to keep inflation up to the target of 2% as desired by the Federal Reserve, and that the purpose of taxes is to hold down inflation?