What do you think about a 3 party system for state governments (DIR)? Designate, through local vote, representatives that would receive our state &/or local taxes designated by the individuals on our W-2’s or 1099’s (or whatever tax form you use). Rather than our taxes go to the winning party for our state, our state taxes can go to the political party we belong to – that way everyone gets to contribute to the issues we care about & no longer have to worry about what is legal or illegal, or become illegal depending on which party is in charge … like planned parenthood. Those state taxes that subsidize planned parenthood, homeless shelters, welfare/food stamps, food industries, … can be designated through the party/parties that want to subsidize it. We won’t have to contribute to causes we don’t believe in (like republicans with planned parenthood & democrats with private prisons).
There’s absolutely zero benefit to having or supporting a third party without fundamental reform of our electoral system, such as proportional representation or transferable votes or something like that.
What? Is this the way it works? This don’t sound right to me…
I live in Nevada. No state tax.
The OP’s proposal is weirder than that: it sounds like they want what amounts to a system of check-boxes where you say “Yes, I want my tax dollars to fund (X).” Where (X) is – well, in the proposal, it’s just “controversial” stuff the government does.
Incorporating federalism, too, so every state can do this.
I don’t even know where to start with critiquing this. If you’re serious, OP, look into anarchocapitalism, where you get to decide whether/how much you want to pay for everything. I’m sure WillFarnaby can provide you with resources.
It seems like it’s an attempt at a slightly streamlined/simplified version of this, where each candidate/party in an election checks a set of boxes, and your tax dollars go only to the set of budget items approved by the candidate you vote for, regardless of who wins.
An argument I can see in favor of this is that you could “implement” it without actually doing anything, and without affecting budgeting in any way. You’d simply create the convenient fiction that the money for (say) planned parenthood is funded from the tax revenues of only a subset of the population; while that subset contributes slightly less to (say) road maintenance and everyone else contributes slightly more to road maintenance, so that the books balance overall. Without requiring any actual administrative burden more than a couple of hours with an excel spreadsheet to work out the numbers for the allocation, and without affecting actual budgets in any way, it might allow people with strong beliefs on certain issues to have a clear conscience.
The only way that there would be no possible valid solution for the fictional allocation would be if none of the main candidates agree with funding something that’s a large part of the budget. But then presumably it shouldn’t actually be funded.
Yes, rather than fight about what is legal, illegal, subsidized or or not subsidized … we could all send our tax dollars where we want, except for where we all need services, like road maintenance, schools, & other such necessities. No need for hostility, was just a question I had regarding ways to help our parties stop fighting so much on the state level & then we can move on to mediating our parties at the federal level once we can play together better locally.
I’m sorry, there are so many problems with this that I don’t know which ones to start with. I’m just not going to try to engage it — but will watch others try.
Gee, think of the possibilities if you carried it a bit further.
Party A is pro Death Penalty.
Party B is anti Death Penalty.
Could only criminals who voted Party A be executed?
All the whiners & complainers can keep silent – I know any ideas to try & quell the in-fighting are terrible for you. You like the chaos, I get it. It excites you. Well it doesn’t excite me & all the other people trying to problem solve & come up with workable solutions to our political crisis. Sure, implementation can seem problematic on the surface – it doesn’t have to be given some time to think about for just a few minutes. We have sin taxes that raise revenue from sales of lotto tickets, alcohol, …etc. In TN, lotto money goes toward funding schools & college tuition for those in need. Our state governments can contract with manufacturers for some collaboration on funding different social issues. Maybe generic brands of various items specifically made for fundraising. When we buy those products we know where the tax goes. It doesn’t have to be through income tax, since not all states have that. Property taxes goes toward local schools in the area, maintenance of public roads, parks, police, …etc. There could be a choice to add in funding for whatever issue that makes sense for property tax (like funding a privately owned prison in your general zip code). It is only as problematic as you want it to be.
The biggest problem is that my neighbors contribute about .05% overall to the tax base, but that one guy on the other side of town, in the big house on the hill, pays almost .12% – significantly more than all of us over here combined. So, he gets more of a voice than we do, and there is no way for our needs to be addressed if that guy and a few of his friends decide to fuck us over.
That already occurs if the opposing party is in rule. If you get to choose where your own taxes go, it is better than nothing isn’t it? It is better to have a choice than no choice when the opposite party is hostile (like the GOP is now to the democrats & vice versa).
I mean, I think the problem here is that we don’t all agree on what counts as a “necessity”. You listed two things: road maintenance and schools. But, those aren’t written in stone as something that government has to provide. There are private roads and private schools. What about someone who doesn’t have kids, or who disagrees with the slant of the textbooks the district selected saying they don’t want to pay for public schools? Is that a less reasonable political position than someone who disagrees with Planned Parenthood not wanting to pay for it?
And so on down the rabbit hole.
Those necessity taxes are separate from social issue subsidies – the gas & property taxes goes towards schools & road maintenance, so those are not an opt-out option. The issues that become so hard-lined like planned parenthood, which can become legal or illegal if the party rule flips – having a way to opt-in whether it be through income tax, product brand fund raising … just something as a way to give people a choice rather than forcing them to accept whatever the ruling party has on the agenda. Even some small changes where those hard-line subjects can be less of an issue that causes the largest amount of animosity. Each state will be different, & they can decide what those hard-line subjects are.
You’re saying a political party that LOST in the last election still gets to designate taxpayer money to fund their pet causes? Whatever happened to “elections have consequences.”
Not all the taxes, just part of it – it is called reaching across the isle. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
In my congressional district, our rep was elected by about 52% to 47%. That means 160K voted for the winner and 148K voted for the loser. That is a lot of people put out of the loop. It has been that way across the country for about ever. How do you address the needs and wants of that many losers?
Oh, this is supposed to be that kind of debate.
Well, I don’t fully support your idea so I’ll see myself out of the thread.
When we look at the details, the procedure for even defining the 3 (is it an exact fixed number?) parties will be problematic — very problematic. I foresee an early schism of the I Party into the I[sub]1[/sub] Party — spend all taxes on free dope for everybody, and the I[sub]2[/sub] Party — spend all taxes harassing abortion doctors.
Note that the weights and meanings of policies are, in general, hardly proportional to their taxpayer cost. Private prisons, for example, can be profit-making for the government. If the voters give $10 million to a party that supports private prisons does it now get the $1 million revenue from the prisons? So it can spend $11 million?
Support for gay marriage is a controversial topic. How much role do you think taxes play in that issue?
And with voters shifting in droves to the Free Dope for Everybody Party, the Save our Schools Party will be spending all of its money in a failing attempt to replace 80 kids-per-classroom schools with 70 kids-per-classroom schools and will have given up on road maintenance, fire protection and so on.
I see OP has tried to address some of these problems:
Who makes these decisions? Is consumer protection a “necessity” or a “luxury”? If I’m in the Free Dope Party, I’ll fight efforts to label schools as “necessary” unless some of the Free Dope spending is also so classified.
Yes.
Praticalities: Not all parties are united in the details of some general principle. So if the “Widgets for All” party gets to spend Xmillion on that project, who writes the laws and all the administrative instructions on how many widgets, when and who is included in the All? Or if there’s a “Widgets for Some” party, how is what they want co-ordinated withe the WFA operation? Who are the civil servants administering the scheme accountable to?
And suppose it’s not just a question of “Yes or no to programme X”, but not quite enough to do the job the party in question promised? If the end result is that only some street lights can go on, or only so many potholes repaired, who gets to decide whose interests are served and whose aren’t? Your neighbour gets a street light because they voted for the party who paid for it, and you don’t? How about when it comes down to policing or defence or the nuclear deterrent?
Of course, you can invent different ways of allowing or encouraging coalitions of opinions and interests to direct government, and that would mean trading plans and commitments on money. But that only works in practice if they agree on a common programme that can be put through as a more or less united administration. And there are all sorts of ways of using citizens initiatives or consultations as ways of setting spending and taxing priorities; but just setting up a system that, automatically, each party gets to spend a bit of money on some part of government as it likes just won’t work.
Principles: The problem here is that government tax and spend isn’t just about providing a cafeteria, or even a fixed price all-you-can-eat buffet, of individual services. Some public services may be better provided and wholly or partly paid for that way, but the heart of it is that a society needs to find a way to decide* together *what makes for a good society, to which tax is the membership fee. Or if you want to look at it purely functionally, some part of one’s income and wealth is the product of society’s investment in being a civilised place to live, and society as a whole is entitled to some return on that investment. Because we are “all members one of another”.