Eli5 Why can’t the government just set aside money instead of deducting it from paychecks?

Question

I was wondering why the government has to deduct taxes from us. Why can’t they set aside what they need to begin with? I think I don’t have an idea of how money truly moves…

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Answer 1

Rather then explain with taxs and inflation and other complex terms. im going to do it with bananas and coconuts.

If there was 1 banana and 1 coconut u can say 1 banana = 1 coconut. But let’s say there were suddenly 2 coconuts. Then the value of the coconut is now 0.5 of a banana. The value has lowered for the coconut compared to the banana. While the banana has increase as compared to the coconut.

Now if coconuts were the money supply in the economy and the banana were the goods and services u purchase. Then u can see how the more u print coconuts (money) the value lowers with each coconut (money) that is being made. This is called inflation and will be important later so keep this in mind.

Now back to why the gov can’t keep the money it prints and spend it.

If the goverment kept printing coconuts then u have inflation where the price of a banana goes up but the value of the banana stays the same so u end up paying more coconuts.

Now picture the goverment as a person. If they keep spending they will run out of money. But they can print coconuts to solve the issue right? Well no because if they do it just increases the price of bananas and u run out of money again and u repeat. The reason taxs are used is because it is like income for the government. It pays for things without having to make more coconuts and thus increasing the cost of bananas.