— PBS.TWIMG.COM via my uncle Bob’s Facebook
As the representative body of a public, I’m pretty sure that the only means a government has to obtain funds is through its citizenry. No, I’m certain.
The issue I have with the above statement is not that it is false but that it presents the government as operating without regard to, if not in direct conflict with, the interests of the “taxpayer.” Problematically, the democratically elected government is representative of and therefore accountable to its citizenry— its taxpayers. Problematically, representative democracy, as civilization itself, is always a compromise, which means, sorry, not everything that happens will always make everyone happy because decisions are made and actions are taken based on what the will of the majority. More problematically, as defined within the socio-economic confines of advanced capitalism, which presumes that the will of the people is economic prosperity, the majority is defined not in relation to population but to capital. By this logic, those who have the most capital drive the decision making process and, as such, play a determining role in what is funded.
This definition of “majority” in reference to capital, which at present is largely comprised of corporations, is naturalized within the citizen-taxpayer body as corporations in the United States are granted many of the same legal rights and protections as people. A corporation, defined as “a number of persons united in one body for a purpose,” is simply a citizen collective. And yet, established as “a collective ownership that could be held with perpetual existence,” the properties, goods, investments, and profits yield– the substance and value that define the corporation itself— are set to not only surpass the lifespan of any and all individuals who comprise the corporation, but are also not subject to the inheritance laws that individuals are subject to in the postmortem transfer of wealth and property. Corporations, as the majority driving democratic decision, are thus more human than human. They never cease to exist and, preceptably, cannot as human livelihood has become intrinsically and traumatically woven into the fabric of capitalism wherein, in its present advanced stage, corporations are the high-endurance, machine-washable, wrinkle-resistant, synthetic fiber that appears (both aesthetically and logically) super appealing but is ultimately the source of our discomfort.
Really, government funds are taxpayer funds. This is undeniable. They have to be. To have a government requires funds, but the government is not a value producing entity. The government is not a corporation, nor a bank, nor a private business– the government is the representative body that “governs” the whole of society, which in the US means, all people are granted basic rights, including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The only means by which a government can garner capital is through the participation of profit making entities. Thus to fund anything at all, the government itself needs to be funded. But funding the government is only justified in that the government does something worth funding. Though my argument is that the government does not in itself produce value, when read through the lens of capitalism at a very basic level we can understand why funding the government is both necessary and worthwhile for capital— government is given capital for the service it provides, which is to ensure the relatively smooth functioning of society, part of this is to ensure the continued function of the economy (which so happens to be capitalist)—this is the value it produces. As the laborer is compensated for his labor that contributes to capital, the government is funded because it contributes to capital by supporting and protecting it by supporting and protecting the citizens that serve as capitalists, laborers, and the reserve army of labor as well as those (for lack of a better word) unproductive citizens that may only be allowed to exist because they offer a modicum of altruism, and thereby a remainder of actual humanity, in what has become a cold, industrial, value-driven world.
The government’s responsibility—its labor—is then to utilize the funds it gathers through taxation to promote social welfare conducive to a functional society. An investment in social welfare— and not just “welfare” but all service that benefit society at large, including defending good ol’ ‘Merica and any attempts to make it great again at the geopolitical level— has to be an investment made by the citizen body and this, necessarily, is facilitated through taxation— the rendering of “citizens” as “taxpayers.” And, as mentioned earlier, not only are corporations technically people, they are wealthy people at that, as are those at their helm, and because of this, through their exponentially greater wealth, corporate interests as “taxpayers” are privy to exponentially greater influence as to how those “taxpayer funds” are allocated. Importantly, the functionality and stability of society has in advanced capitalism is linked to the maintenance and proliferation of that social-political-economic system. In this, government funding is always-already resolved to reproduce its taxbase as founded on an unequal, unfair system that cannot be democratic, but is given consent and sustenance under the premise that everyone has the ability to move to the top. Taxpayers fund their own complacency while dwelling on the ways are being cheated and how they would do it “better” if they were in charge. But what this consent to capitalism facilitates not only a non-democracy, but also the persistence of the most insidious trappings of the “American Dream.” Here we find our belief that if we work hard enough, or get lucky enough, we will be unshakably comfortable— That we won’t have to worry about how it’s done at all because as it appears, people on welfare, “illegals,” corporate tax breaks in light of minor increases in income tax, all the things that keep the working class on their social media soapboxes, matter in no substantial way to those at the top of the economic ladder.
In summation: What the government does is taxpayer funded and, in that, it is driven by what taxpayers want proportionally according to who pays the most taxes. And while it is completely true that the narrow majority of tax revenue is sourced from income tax (51%), it must be understood that those with higher incomes not only pay a greater rate, they are often in professions that most directly benefit from the reification of the status quo, including the corporate bailouts, off-shoring, globalization of labor, inflation, increasingly unaffordable standards of living, and the sustenance of a minimally tolerable “welfare state,” that are serviced through government funds. These measures all work to ensure memes are made that distract from the larger issue— the truth behind the labor-driven basis of taxpayer funds and the fact that under capitalism we have come to see all relations as labor relations and capital exchanges, rendering our government but another service provider that should, by accepting our money in the form of taxes should be delivering us a product that always directly benefits us. Capitalism as individually motivated doesn’t actually have room for social welfare that exists as more than illusion.
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