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Dead people don't need houses. Ukrainian casualties mean they need money less, not more.
And that's before we even get to the question of why my tax money should be the money that Ukraine gets.
Perhaps not, but the ones who are still alive might like to have an intact train station again, for example.
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What makes you think it's your tax money that's the money that Ukraine gets, as opposed to your pro-war fellow citizenry's money?
Your money tax money could be the tax money covering the roads and services that directly and indirectly support you. There's more than enough government expenditures to go around.
Complete and utter sophistry.
Money is fungible. Tax dollars (and the future taxes on which the us government borrows) fund the entire budget. You can’t say tax dollar X funds project A and tax dollar Y funds project B. Fungibility means tax dollar X and Y funds projects A and B.
If the government budget was smaller, there would be less tax (or less inflation). Or alternatively if project B is cancelled, then project C can occur.
The initial argument was stating that the government spending on Ukraine was unjustified because it is effectively ultra vires. Responding that some citizens like the spending thereby justifying the spending means no government spending can be ultra vires as some citizens will always support some government spending (see lizardman constant).
No, I don’t think that is a winning argument, especially for a government of supposedly limited powers.
The response to “but some citizens want X and X is outside the scope of government power so we should ignore that limit” is “some citizens should form a group that funds X. This happens all of the time. Why is Ukraine unique in that regard?
If it's sophistry in one direction, it's for the same reason it's sophistry in the other. It is precisely because money is fungible that the argument that one's personal money is going to unacceptable cause X ('why should my money be going to Ukraine') is as valid as the refutation that you might as well say it's to a preferable cause Y ('no, your money is going to services you use'). Money doesn't start as fungible for government services, but stop being fungible and start being individual onus for other causes.
Nor does the American (or any other modern) taxation system work on the principle of 'figure out what the fiscal year's requirements are, then decide tax rates for the year,' so arguments that if Expenditure A was absent a person's taxes would be correspondingly doesn't hold water. No modern government works on the principle of 'only citizens who want to support X have to pay taxes to support it,' and that's a pretty basic misunderstanding of how governments works to confuse government taxation and expenditure systems with the structure of a purpose-structured non-government organization. This doesn't even touch on how much of the aid to Ukraine is actually conveyed, ie in the form of government inventories not seeing use and often slated for destruction without use.
Of course, this diversion too is all sophistry to avoid the pretty blatant and obvious answer as to why Citizen Whomever's tax money should go to Ukraine: because the representatives elected by Citizen's fellow Citizens voted so in accordance with the laws and established legitimate processes of the land, to the general support of Citizen's fellow Citizens, and Ukraine is not unique in this respect. Citizen Whomever's money is also going to water treatment, electrical infrastructure, schools, hospitals, police, tax incentives, procurement, government worker salaries, and so on. This is fundamentally the same complaint for all government expenditures for things an individual tax payer doesn't like. Not liking what the government spends taxpayer money on is not the same as taxpayer being spent unjustly.
No. Everything the government does is funded by my taxes dollars. That is the fungible part. So yes, some of my tax dollars (or future tax dollars) goes to fund Ukraine. There is not “sophistry” either way.
And yes, the objection “why should my taxpayer dollars go to support Ukraine” is a valid argument (just like any argument about government spending). It’s purpose is manifold:
It reminds congress people that money isn’t theirs; it is forcibly taken from citizens. They should be stewards. Is this really an expenditure they should be making? There is a principal agent here and reminding the agent “it isn’t your money” is good.
It asks the question of whether this is legitimate. Could the government give anyone they want $100b? Surely there are conceptual limits about what the federal government can do with their spending power. Well, it isn’t clear the exact wellspring of congressional power here.
It is a rhetorical device to other citizens to remind them their scarce resources are being spent in a particular way.
Maybe if more people paid federal taxes, the argument would have more bite.
There is a political theory aspect here as well. What is the ethical (apart from legal) justifying taking by force money from party A to give that money to noncitizens? While there is of course objections to taking from party a to give to party b when party b is a citizen, it would seem the objection is stronger in the context of a nation state (and if we reject the concept of nation state then why the hell are we doing anything in Ukraine). There needs to be a justification of why it is ethical to take from party A to give to non citizens beyond “we have the power” or “some of our citizens like it.”
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