Wealth & Money Quote by John Anderson

A certain kind of public argument hides inside that anxious opening: “I don’t know.” It’s the rhetorical shrug that isn’t really a shrug at all, a prelude to scolding. Anderson positions “the taxpayer” as both sovereign and naïf, the person everyone invokes and no one actually consults. By casting doubt on what taxpayers “understand,” he quietly moves authority away from democratic intuition (what things feel like they cost) and toward technocratic accounting (what things allegedly generate).

The sentence is a funnel: it starts with uncertainty, then rushes into an avalanche of magnitude words - “just how much,” “wealth,” “being and can be created,” “flows,” “just how many jobs depend.” That rhythm matters. It’s not designed to persuade with evidence; it’s designed to overwhelm with scale, to make skepticism feel irresponsible. The repeated “just how” functions like a drumbeat: you don’t merely disagree, you fail to grasp the enormity.

Subtextually, it’s a defense of some wealth-producing system that’s politically exposed - corporate incentives, public-private spending, financialized industries, maybe even controversial projects that invite “why are we paying for this?” backlash. Anderson’s emphasis on jobs is the classic pressure point: question the flow of wealth and you’re not just tightening a budget, you’re threatening livelihoods. The quote’s real intent is to shift the debate from fairness to dependence: not “is it right?” but “can you afford to interrupt it?” In that framing, the economy becomes a river you’re warned not to dam, even if you’re the one paying for the water rights.