“The idea that those two numbers should be in balance is holdover thinking from the gold standard, a system that was fundamentally based in fetishism and magical thinking.”

Also, do you have a crystal ball?

What is money and/or currency

Yeah, that’s empirically, mathematically not how fractional-reserve banking works. Read the article. Read Keynes. Read a newspaper. Read this:

What does the government use to repay it’s debts?

You can’t change the narrative if you don’t change the language. The right is in power, in part because they know that. There’s a reason the death tax isn’t popular but the estate tax is. There’s a reason that end of life counseling got taken out of the ACA.

For me it would be expanding road projects that have been idle or sitting on the drawing boards. Don’t wait 6 months after winter to fill potholes. Speed up existing road projects. Expand Rt 476 to 3 lanes south of RT 3 and dam the Swarthmorons.

they only like me here and The Root i think...i’m grey on all the other pages and banned on Deadspin. but grey is the new black...

I think a substantial number of Americans (about a third to a half) only think of a “taxpayer” as someone who pays income tax.

i can only guess on PA but your gas tax has to fund more than just roads/transportation right?

why on earth are you 2 still grey?

That’s not actually true. Plenty of government funding comes from debt spending, plenty of it comes from corporate taxes and foreign taxes, but when people say “tax payers” that’s not who they refer to.

If you spend enough time in comment sections for posts about public policy, you’ll realize pretty quickly that there’s plenty of people who think a large segment of the population doesn’t pay taxes.

As for hairsplitting over words, that’s what the left does when it’s conceded that it’s too weak to make real world political changes. It’s pathetic and useless

so true Moon...so true

Government isn’t like a business transaction.

Exposing hypocrisy may feel good, but it does little actual good.

Uh yeah, examining the slightly racist/anti-poor language we use is important, as language shapes our reality.

It might seem like splitting hairs, but using “taxpayer money” instead of “public money” is a dog whistle; it furthers the narrative that whoever pays more in taxes “deserves” a bigger voice in government, when one’s income has much more to do with the environment one was born into.

I really hope men reading this piece don’t feel defensive. It’s ok to admit that we haven’t done enough to change the culture of how men treat women, but we can accept that we need to actively change how we treat other men. Not speaking up when your friends are doing something that you know is wrong is you being…