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Glad you asked. There's the obvious three ways to finance government:

- Taxes - debt financing - seignorage

The latter two aren't taxes, but people end up paying for the expenses anyway.

Governments can also plunder other country's money. While this sounds very Roman empire, it's still a thing. Case in point freezing another country's foreign exchange reserves, refusing to return their gold, confiscating the interest on the reserves, etc



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