Isn't that the dream though? To be overpaid and not have to work hard?
You're still wrong on the merits, though. To pick one example, the folks who work at my local MVA ("DMV" in most states) office do not work for me, though they're paid out of my taxes and those of everyone else who earns in Maryland. They don't report to me.
Nor should they, because if they did, they would also report to that freak who drives a car plastered with QAnon garbage around Perry Hall.
My city councilman and my General Assembly representatives work for me, but the people employed to deliver services managed by the state and city government do not.
I presume you mean to imply that civil servants are paid by your taxes, but that's not true either if we're talking about a sovereign state - a moments consideration would show that spending must preceed taxation, which is true as a matter of accounting.
Really you'd do better to note that state employees allow you to get money enabling you to pay your taxes (but that's also not a very helpful way to look at it).
This comes back to bite California every time there is a major tax revenue crunch for whatever reason.
If it means "they cannot make payments on bonds and cannot issue new ones because nobody wants them" then the Feds will have to step in, or they'll have to liquidate state assets (including privatizing various governmental functions, selling land and leasing it back, etc), or raise taxes to balance the budget. They literally cannot print money.
This cycle has already destroyed a few cities (usually the city gets swallowed by the county).
There's a step where they issue "warrants" like CA did a few times: https://taxfoundation.org/blog/california-issuing-state-warr...
https://reason.com/2019/03/01/companies-should-avoid-states-...
Edit: here's my offer for the UK case: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/public-purpose/publications/2...
If you want to argue something that directly contradicts that analysis, I await with anticipation.
However, I suggest they probably should care given how much policy is guided by an incorrect understanding of the monetary system. The whole concern about deficits and sovereign "debt" is the obvious one.
In addition, a good understanding of why taxation is necessary helps to understand which taxes might be useful and which are not.
Finally (for now!), policy options open up when you understand this stuff properly that make no sense at all through the state-as-a-household view.
Politicians need to be held to account and an ignorant population is not able to do that.
Put another way, go ask some African nation that got "bailed out" by the IMF if their "deficits didn't matter."
Where's the mechanism for inflation?
It's government spending that doesn't cause a deficit that is potentially inflationary, not the deficit spending part.
That is, the ability of a state to provision itself is driven through its currency which in turn is driven through taxation.
The US Treasury website provides a wealth of information about how the Government collects and spends its revenue.
Here's a more complete analysis of the US: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43905834?seq=21
Edit having read your edit: that paper doesn't have the rest of the circuit so can't explain the source of the money.
If you haven't taken an accounting course already, I would highly recommend it!
When you have the whole model, you'll see that money creation (triggered by spending) has to preceed destruction (from taxation for the most part), otherwise nothing can flow.
A critical point to take from this is to note that all the entities in the circuit need to be in balance (for the double entries to be correct). That means that for the private sector to have net savings and the foreign sector to be in surplus (i.e. a historic current account deficit), the government sector (which includes the central bank) must be in deficit.
This is super important! It means that deficits are not just not a problem, but that they are a necessary part of the system. It also shows that governments are not financially constrained (there's no limit on how big the numbers can be), so taxation is not needed for getting the money to pay for things. [2]
Steve keen has a blog post that goes through much of the accounts behind this:
https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/money-from-nothing
[1] receipts and outlays is interesting terminology vs income and expenditure - perhaps noting that the government is not a business?
[2] however, governments very much _are_ resource constrained, so they must use their infinite buying power very wisely, otherwise inflation ensues. This shows one of the main purposes of taxation, which is to induce the private sector to provide real resources that the government can purchase.
I’m not going down the MMT rabbit hole with you; it is a waste of time.
Can you elaborate on that? I can think of numerous examples from history for how governments bootstrap themselves. If your point is as simple as who pays the tax collector, the tax collector can be paid on commission, debt, or with plunder.
The general case is more or less the same as the UK with only the details varying. As noted elsewhere, this doesn't apply to non sovereign states.