The stories about federal workers who voted for Trump are starting to rival the Cletus Safaris to Midwestern diners, in which Trump supporters are interviewed. Nonetheless, this addition to this barfomatic genre by the Washington Post does provide one interesting nugget to toss around (boldface mine):
For Capsopoulos, the government has two primary purposes: to uphold public safety and ensure that tax dollars are well spent.
“Other than that,” said the federal worker, who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 before becoming a Trump supporter, “the government should not be in the business of supplying jobs.”
I realize that legislators are acutely aware of how many jobs are created in their states or districts by various programs–their political survival depends on this. But, for Democrats, they’ve gotten away from describing these programs for the good they do. Some of it will ‘critical’, in that it saves lives and so on. But the government does–or did, anyway–important things, useful things, or just things that make life better and more interesting.
One thing we need to stop doing is reducing everything to political economy: there are things worth doing, and we should and, importantly, can defend these programs on the merits. Otherwise, we are left with a very nasty and brutish concept of the public good: “to uphold public safety and ensure that tax dollars are well spent.”
We deserve better*.
*Except for Elon Musk. He’s an asshole.
mikethemadbiologist
According to the religious extremists (Christian Reconstructionists, New Apostolic Reformation, &c.) the government’s only purposes are to wage war and protect private property.
The “ensure that tax dollars are well spent” remark passed without comment. Apparently Mike, you believe that dollars grow on billionaires.
Taxes do not (and cannot) provision federal programs. Where would taxpayers get the dollars to pay those taxes if the monopoly provider of dollars didn’t spend them out into the economy first? It’s not “tax & spend,” it *must* be “spend first, then retrieve some dollars in taxes.” The taxes are important, not to provide dollars to the government that can literally make them without limit, but to ensure there’s demand for dollars.
Here’s something no one said, ever: “The Japanese just attacked Pearl Harbor, but we’re a little low on cash, so we won’t respond.” The government took over 50% of the American economy in World War II. JFYI, the “Green New Deal” would only take 5%.
It’s fashionable to think government mustn’t provide jobs, and must run a small a deficit as possible. Both major parties want to reduce national debt–team red by reducing spending (hence the attack on Social Security and Medicare), team blue by increasing taxes. This is a fundamental illusion. See https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-federal-budget-is-not_b_457404
What do we call those dollars spent, but not retrieved in taxes…you know, the ones in your wallet? Answer #1: the dollar financial assets of the population. Answer #2: national debt. Both answers describe exactly the same thing, just as your bank account is your asset, but the bank’s liability.
If you think about it, the requirement to get dollars for that inevitable liability–taxes–is what creates *unemployment*. Requiring a job guarantee of government would be kinder, more human, and probably cheaper than all of the “labor discipline” employed to whip people into jobs.
One should be clear about this: those people aren’t against government. They’re against government providing services. They’re against the New Deal and anything resembling it. They support police statism. They support government jailing and killing people — except themselves of course. They support not only the ability to wage war, but actual aggressive war. They support government secrecy and government subversion.
In short, they oppose everything our founding fathers stood for.
A bit about a comment above. If someone had had the guts to mint the trillion-dollar coins, we could reduce or even eliminate the Federal debt. We could disassociate the deficit from actual debt, which is paid to wealthy investors.