Not that the amount of taxes paid ever stopped a government from trying borrow and spend way more than that.
Not that the amount of taxes paid ever stopped a government from trying borrow and spend way more than that.
The only things a government can run out of are faith in the future and internal and external trust. When either or both of those disappear, human animals panic and the economy stops working.
Private enclosure of capital - which is equivalent to private enclosure of political and economic power - is far more likely to create that sort of breakdown than high taxes and generous public spending. (Effective - non-corrupt - public spending being equivalent to policy decisions that broaden and diffuse political power rather than concentrating it.)
Effective generous public spending is actually a political negative feedback mechanism that damps wild oscillations in confidence, seeds future investment, and enhances political stability.
Laws are the same way: members of civilization have to mutually agree on how to create and follow the laws for them to "work".
Civilization is the Mother of All Handshakes. If a large enough percentage of the population disagrees with the "agreements", anarchy happens.
Modern technology and civilization are both inherently driven by standards: both written and de-facto.
Governments frequently consume more resources than they can purchase with the taxes they collect.
Yes, they could just print all the money they could ever need. And when they do, inflation runs wild. Then a government cannot borrow in its own currency because no one will trust it. Or it must pay a high rate.
The US government is in a unique situation. It's been able to print much more than a government normally could because it is the most trusted reserve currency in a rapidly globalizing world. Trillions of dollars are held overseas. And if the dollar loses that role, you will see a lot of inflation as those dollars return to the US. Even if it doesn't lose that role and the world just stops taking additional dollars, the US would have to print less to keep the same rate of inflation.
Most governments don't fall into this category. And no country is in this category forever.
A country's currency is really just another form of debt. And while it may never run out, the more it prints, the more it declines in value. It's not debt people can collect on, but the law of supply and demand will certainly collect on this debt.
And it's also a tax, a tax on savings. And the country could remove dollars from circulation, thereby reducing this debt and reversing the decline in the value of savings.
Government, taxes, and private industry are all tools of civilization. Tools are imperfect and the human managers & users are imperfect. One has to monitor all of them to keep them in decent working order. They won't just automatically run in an optimum mode if citizens don't keep a critical eye on them all.