What If You Could Choose Where Your Tax Dollars Went?

[hmkpoker]

Here's something that just struck me. What if, on April 15, your federal butt-pounding was accompanied by a list allowing you to decide where, in the government, your money goes?

The list would include all the wonderful things we spend money on, and each option would be accompanied by a choice of what percent of your taxes will be allocated there. A "recommended donation guideline," expressing recommended percentage allocations, will be provided for those who don't want to/can't think, and they can simply submit their taxes to be allocated by force (as they do now) if they so choose.

I haven't put much thought into such a system (mainly because I'm against it [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ), but I think that this idea could spark some interesting discussion.

Would it be better if the average bloke could choose which departments his tax dollars went to?

[GoodCallYouWin]

Not really, the special interests would still suck up all the money.

[Nielsio]

This is another version of http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1 , and my response is the same.

[AzDesertRat]

You have to make it simple--just a list and check off what you want---putting in percentages would make things too confusing for most people.

[pvn]

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I hate missing these posts. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[ZeroPointMachine]

As long as it goes through the Federal Government, you will be lucky if $1 of results is produced for every $5 you put in. Keep your $5 and give it to your local organization of choice which can produce results or lose your contribution to a more effective organization.

Give liberty a chance.

ZPM

[ALawPoker]

I mean, I think your system undeniably works better in terms of efficiently meeting people with their goals. But the people who lose are the people who (albeit irrationally) care how I choose to spend my money.

It'd be nice if people just stayed out of my life. But, they don't. They care. So basically what I'm saying is I'm not sure your system really accomplishes much, because if people went for it, they could also go for anarchy.

I don't think people honestly care that I just share my money. They want me to share it in a way that they determine is best. But I think your idea does a good job in highlighting this. Anyone who disagrees with it would basically have to admit "this is wrong because I know better what you should be doing."


Also hmk, you should delete some PMs. You're full.

[mosdef]

I think that an improved version of this would include some sort of conditional elements. For example, I may want to donate 5% of my income to a redistribution-to-the-poor program, but only if a sufficient amount of money is raised. In other words, if only poor people and me opt into the program the degree of help I can provide to all poor people by myself is so small that it would pointless for me to allocate my small amount of money across all the poor people (i.e. in that case I could do a better job locally than a centralized government could do globally).

For people that say that such a process is "too complex", you could include an option for "spend my money any way you want".

[AzDesertRat]

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For people that say that such a process is "too complex", you could include an option for "spend my money any way you want".

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or by simply not selecting anything, it would default to that. Most people are too dumb to know anything else.