Untaxed billionaire inheritances could fund food aid threefold over

Evidence

The economic institutions in charge, from countries’ central banks and treasuries to the International Monetary Fund, serve the primary purpose of “stabilizing” our economy. A close reading of history shows that to achieve such stabilization, labor relations must be shaped against workers so that they have no alternative but to accept a subordinate role in the production process. The toolbox of macroeconomic management—social expenditure cuts, regressive taxation, interest rate hikes, privatization—is based on the sacrifice of working people. Again, this goal takes precedence over all others, even at the cost of a temporary economic recession or greater debt. Indeed, it is easy to unmask the political priorities at stake when considering, for example, the cost to American citizens of not taxing the rich. According to the US Treasury, taxing capital gains at death instead of allowing them to be passed on untaxed would raise over 400 billion for the country over the next decade, almost exclusively from the wealthiest 1 percent. In 2023 the federal government spent less than a third of this amount on nutrition assistance programs, including food stamps. The systematic defunding of the Internal Revenue Service is another emblematic case in point. The firing of public employees under the pretext of depleting state coffers has ironically cost an estimated 7.5 trillion in over a decade, nearly 4.5 times the 2023 fiscal year deficit. Austerity capitalism is expensive. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 157

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Pairs with ‘On Sacrifice’ as economic sacrifice laid upon workers to stabilize a stratified order.
• SHARE: The $7.5 trillion IRS-defunding cost figure (4.5x the annual deficit) is a striking stat for someone into fiscal policy.