# Choosing where your taxes go **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 16, 2014, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807 "2014-03-16T00:37:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/21 "2014-03-16T15:45:25Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > As a less radical option, some areas of the budget seen as too important to be voted on - like, say, defense or safety net programs - could be pre-determined, but apart from those, I think it would work. The split up of the budget would mirror what the general population wants. So - yay or nay? Your idea is a disaster. First off, defence and the safety net account for the lion’s share of the budget, so any changes in allocation of the remainder wouldn’t make that much of a difference. If I was in charge of determining the budget, I’d absolutely make massive slashes to defence spendng, and probably make some minor trimmings to health care spending, so I’m not especially impressed by the option to choose where _the rest of_ my taxes go. Secondly, most people aren’t particularly good judges of how resources should best be allocated: some of them are simply ignorant of the details of running the government, and a lot of us are blinded by economic self interest. Thirdly, I don’t think you’d get agreement on ‘what areas of the budget are too important to be voted on’. Person A might argue that funding for crisis pregnancy centers is sacrosanct. Person B might argue the same about wildlife conservation efforts. Person C might argue that about alternative energy funding. Person D might say it about relief aid to Africa. Personally, I think all four of those are better uses of US government funding than funnelling money to ‘democracy’ activists in the Ukraine, Venezuela, and Thailand, but that’s just me. In any case, you aren’t going to get agreement on what those top prioirities are, so the whole thing is dead in the water. ---
**Author:** ![FeAudrey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7feea3/32.png) [@FeAudrey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FeAudrey)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/22 "2014-03-16T18:56:00Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > … What if people could choose where their taxes go? … Only about half the population pays Federal income taxes. So you’d be shutting the other (poorer) half out of the decision-making process. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAlecCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/67e7ee/32.png) [@SmartAlecCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAlecCat)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/23 "2014-03-16T19:31:46Z")
It would be too unwieldy to do it for each person, but perhaps groups of people could each pick someone to represent them in such budget allocation discussions. To combat the “uniformed” voter, we could pay each of those representatives to spend some time learning about the issues, then have them vote on the budgets for each part of the government on our behalf. Surely that system would be much better than whatever it is they do now… ---
**Author:** ![Mrs.Cake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/2acd7d/32.png) [@Mrs.Cake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs.Cake)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/24 "2014-03-17T03:38:08Z")
Don’t forget we’ll need to add an allocation line for the enormous additional bookkeeping and internal audit department costs needed to track and verify that everybody’s chosen allocation is done correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Taber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ac91a4/32.png) [@Taber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taber)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/25 "2014-03-17T19:55:30Z")
My most optimistic prediction of the results of this are that the most important thing government does will be massively overfunded, and everything else will be massively underfunded. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/26 "2014-03-18T21:47:51Z")
Even without all the misallocation that would be done by people’s misconceptions of what’s important… this would present an almost impossible problem of coordination _even if almost everyone agreed_ on what the funding levels should be. You have to allocate your money not only according to where you think the money should go, but according to where you think _other_ people will allocate their money. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/27 "2014-03-18T22:16:16Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > Wouldn’t that violate the Establishment Clause since belief in PA road maintenance is pretty much mythical? 🙂 Brings back memories of driving to Grandma’s house in Reading … “well, there was road work on 22…” Every friggin’ year… But seriously, imagining that “my” money is going to social programs while that of those who support that military goes there makes me feel better about the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807/28 "2014-03-20T15:18:38Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > That doesn’t even make any sense. The deficit is the difference between taxes and expenditure. The debt is a running total of deficits. It’s an excess of expenditure. How exactly would one elect for their taxes, which as a whole are insufficient, to pay off the debt? Presumably spending levels can only be set subject to any funds earmarked for debt reduction - so voting your tax dollars to debt reduction means less spending. I don’t know how we’d figure out how much we actually need to tax people under such a system, though. > [@monstro](#): > > Programs need to have some assurances that their funding streams are consistent year-to-year. This. We’d have been reconstituting the USAF more or less from scratch in the year after 9/11 (which, on reflection, might not have been altogether a bad thing.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/choosing-where-your-taxes-go/683807.md?page=1)