This rhetoric around taxes is tiresome. Once you pay your taxes it's not your money anymore. There's no magic that makes taxes different than collected rent or paying a bill. It's entirely a political framing-- a new one at that.
Oh? Um? Whatever happened to taxation without representation? Whatever happened to of the people, by the people, for the people?
The gov is nothing without you and your revenue. They work for you. They are (supposed to be) your agent/agency.
Long to short, the money belongs to you. The language should reflect that. The fact that it doesn't enabled people to forget the true nature of the relationship. Suggested reading: 1984.
> Whatever happened to taxation without representation? Whatever happened to of the people, by the people, for the people?
Representation in government is not ownership of government.
> Long to short, the money belongs to you.
It literally doesn't. By definition it doesn't. Respect the is-ought distinction.
> Suggested reading: 1984.
Suggestion: drop the certainty in your perspective. Your confidence in a wrong idea based on such shallow reasoning means you can learn a lot more than you already know.
If I buy a $10k car, and expense it to my employer I would say the car cost my employer $10k. I may have been the one with agency, but the cost is not mine to bear. The idea of representative government, is that we're employing the government to decide how our money is spent.
You hand your employee a credit card. They buy a car with it. They drive the car back to the office, hand you the keys and proclaim, "Look what I bought you."
In your world the reply is, "Golly gee. Thanks. You're so good to me."
In my world the obvious reply is, "Huh? What? Do you think I'm stupid?"
Language is a tool, and it can also be a weapon. Orwell would disagree with one of us. I'm fairly confident it would not be me.
I wasn't implying it was some outlandish misbehaviour. Company cars are a real and common occurance, as are other large business expenses, like plane tickets.
And the abstraction of the state having money is helpful? How so? It's fake. Words matter. Language matters. Ask Orwell.
The point being when the abstraction is removed and the truth repeated, perceptions, opinions, and eventually the decisions and actions of citizens will change. As it is, the abstraction enables complacency.
The government is not your employer. YOU are the government's employer. See? The conventional lexicon has confused you. Which, thank you, supports my original statement.
> And the abstraction of the state having money is helpful? How so? It's fake. Words matter. Language matters. Ask Orwell.
The state is a real, tangible entity that has a separate coexistence from the collective of individuals under its jurisdiction. The US is not a democracy--it is very intentionally not a democracy--it is a republic.
What you are arguing, although you are using language to obfuscate the meaning, is that you personally own anything the state owns. But even if you take the mistaken view that the government is nothing more than the people it governs, that ownership is not personal, but collective.
