Everyone is Wrong About Taxes

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Steve Antonioni is not a financial advisor and nothing in this video should be construed as investment advice.

00:00 The Truth About Taxes
02:00 The Wrong Way to Think About Taxes
03:03 The Right Way to Think About Taxes
06:30 This Psychological Trick Fools You
08:54 Government Debt Will Never Stop Growing
10:59 The Truth About Inflation

[LisaCulton]

I like that you used the word "trick" because it is a trick to make people overlook the fact that taxes are their greatest expense.

[flowmastaflam]

To the financially literate, only assets matter. The price they cost doesn't. Collect assets. Land, houses, precious metals, art, collectables. Prices fluctuate and inflate, but owning assets protects you from that. Everything else is speculation.

[bilbobobbytoucansam]

Been absolutely LOVING your newer content recently. You have a great mix of everything that's important for someone trying to find their way in today's world

[morenamotsiri]

This man is just too sharp. I feel my university degree was a waste. You literally summarized a lot of chapters in eco's textbooks.

[kattybob]

Very thought provoking. Yeah, try NOT paying as a protest and see where it gets you . I am guessing the money went to paying the interest only on the loans aquired. There will also wonderings about, if there is no taxes paid, what about the people on welfare etc. Also when you pay taxes we can scream at cops and politicans saying, " we pay your taxes". Damn, this takes that narrative away. And yes, paychecks before taxes looks very nice indeed.

[sorensje]

another good book besides "the deficit myth: mmt" is "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by David Graeber and "Capital" by Thomas Piketty

[andrewjc]

Your main premise is technically correct, but only in a very narrow sense. In actuality, governments create little to nothing, so anything they 'provide' is produced (e.g. paid) for by someone else. The mechanism can be through currency debasement (i.e. inflation) and/or taxation. The fact that there are some intermediary debits and credits (currency creation/destruction) is missing the forest for the trees.

[particleconfig.]

Brah! First explanation of these moneyprinter go Brrrr I've encountered. Much more clear than all those hectic cartoonish infographic explanations out there. Even with the pro's it wouldn't click and stay with me but your is very well understood and built up to in a different way.

[LisaCulton]

In Switzerland, you get "all your money" if you are a permanent resident or citizen. It feels nice... until you get those big tax bills.

[-.---.-.-.-]

Informative video, but I would argue that money printing is just another form of taxation (as you also point out yourself). It does not matter whether the government taxes you directly by taking money out of your paycheck, or indirectly by printing money and reducing the value of your paycheck. This differentiation is only important when talking about more complex topics than covered by this video.

[ShawnBrezny]

Government spending, taxation and debt is all funny money at this point. You mentioned that this system sounds insane... and it really is. It's like the game monopoly and the government is the banker and can keep making money when ever they need it. This recipe eventually ends in disaster, just look at Rome.

[TheSilentWealth]

For a second there I thought this was about Texas 🤠

[christophilous]

Seems like a distinction without a difference.

[katierose]

5:46 So who gets the 3.4T that taxes pay? I'd say it's 50/50.. half tax payers, half printing machine

[Jamesaepp]

My biggest problem with the explanation here is it side steps the entire concept of an "account payable".

[LisaCulton]

Deficit spending. Your tax dollars are only going towards paying interest on loans.

[YogiLogic]

This is a naive viewpoint.
'Your Money' doesn't need to be spent. Money is fungible. When government 'Destroys' those tax collected 3.x tn dollars collected against the actually spent 6 tn, it does bring the deficit down by that amount. So taxes do matter.

[thomashazuka]

Stephen,
You are a bright, creative guy and your talks are quite interesting. You are particularly creative in discussing taxes.
When you say that taxes don’t pay for things, and that taxes rather destroy money, I find your argument quite convoluted. Rather than argue with you about your statements, let me give my take on monetary theory, modern or otherwise:

Governments raise the money used to pay for expenditures by two routes: confiscation ( taxation) or borrowing. ( I am assuming that the government is not a productive organization, and very few people would argue with that.) We know all too well how taxation works. When it comes to borrowing, the government has two routes. The first route is to issue conventional securities that have a set maturity and a fixed coupon. These are treasury bills, notes, and bonds.

But the government also borrows by issuing securities that have no maturity and pay no coupon. The British first issued perpetual securities to finance the Napoleonic wars. But those securities, called consuls, did pay a coupon.
Now, if a company were to issue such a security with the coupon set to zero, it would have a value of zero. Who would pay money for security that never matured and provided no cash flows?

But in the case of the U.S. Government, these securities are issued in huge quantities, and widely accepted. They are called dollars. They entail a promise to pay a dollar to the holder of a dollar. People accept dollars because they know that someone else will accept their dollar.

It really doesn’t matter whether the money raised by taxes is used to buy things or is used to retire the debt that was used to buy things. Stephen is referring to the second case where he characterizes the retirement of debt as destroying money.

I confess that I may have a leg up in mildly critiquing Stephen. I was fortunate enough to be taught, over forty years ago, by three professors who went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics at various times.
I still immensely enjoy the various videos that Stephen provides for us!

[JohnTovar-ksdp]

You do have to pay. You pay through taxes. Or inflation, which is just a flat tax. Or, if the Fed wants to keep inflation under control, through higher interest rates, which is a tax on debt.
I agree the amount the government spends is the true tax rate, that has to be made up in other ways to hide the true cost.
Government spending can be fine, in theory, but the reality is people are never as wise at spending other peoples money as they are their own. So the financial hit becomes tremendous.

[СтефанСтанковиќ]

I’m super glad you did this video as very few people actually understand how this mechanism works. Would’ve been nice if you explained how money creation actually works (via commercial banks making loans) and how all that fits in the picture. People still think that governments create all the money, when in reality, ~97% of it is created by banks ex nihilo.