If I allocate 0% for everything, do I get all my money back in my refund?
At what part of the process are people educated about the likely outcome of their decisions?
I will say, I am morbidly curious to see just how the US public would allocate funding in real life. 64% for Education? 15% for Veterans?
This is like those people who are morbidly curious to see a Trump presidency. I mean, how bad could it be, right? :eek:
So, unless there’s more to this proposal, everyone allocates 100% of their taxes to themselves. (Starting with government employees, then everyone else.) People can choose to spend their money on governmental objectives now, that’s basically what choosing to allocate one’s taxes to anyone else would be.
So, in effect what is proposed is no taxes at all. How is this proposal different from simple anarchy?
Are people proposing this seriously? If so, it may be the stupidest “serious” idea I’ve ever heard of. For those to whom this is not clear, review the breakout in OP and decide what numbers you’d prefer.
6% interest on the debt. Should that be zero? Or 10%?
27% for health. Cut that very much and we really will need to march Grandma to the death camp. Since the “voting” would be proportional to taxes paid, it seems clear that Medicare, SSI, Unemployment Insurance would be severely cut.
16% for military – this actually is discretionary. Plenty of people would prefer that as low as 14%, plenty would prefer it as high as 18%. But, with the money freed up by sending retirees to the death camps, it will soar to 30% or more. I guess we’ll need to start some major wars to use all that money.
The idea is so preposterous that I’m embarassed on behalf of you adults for even discussing it. 
Pretty much the entire justification for having governments at all is that some important decisions are best made collectively, not individually. This is one of them.
Your basic premise is wrong. The worst time the country was polarised was in the 1860 presidential election.
50/50 split? pshaw; that suggests at least half the country supports a candidate for president.
• try a 39.8% / 29.5% / 18.1% / 12.6% split of the popular vote.
• there were four candidates who carried at least one state;
• no candidate had enough support to be on the ballot in every state;
• the Democratic Party was so badly split that it ran two different tickets: a Northern Democrat (Douglas) and a Southern Democrat (Breckenridge);
• no-one had a majority of the popular vote;
• the election of Abraham Lincoln was enough to spark secessionist movements in the southern states.
Until those levels of division are reached again, let’s not fall into the common ahistorical assumption that we live in the worst of times.
Everyone would be voting blind. There would be no coordination of effort, no organization. Popular programs would get disproportionate support.
Dull, but necessary functions would fall by the wayside. Who’s going to vote for toxic waste cleanup, when much more glorious things invite their vote?
A slight improvement over this would be for some governing body to put together a set of fully integrated budget packages, each with different emphases – the “war” budget, the “science” budget, the “education” budget, etc. – and allow people to vote among these.
But, of course, far more reasonable is for us to vote for representatives, who craft budgets on our behalf. When you can’t do something yourself – like defend the country, or clean up toxic waste – you hire it done for you.
This seems to be the root of your supposition that it would be chaotic madness, but again, I simply don’t agree.
Let’s consider Obamacare, which has been probably the most controversial political topic over the last five years, and was specifically one of your examples. If we look at the actual sentiment trend this Gallup poll chart a little down the page, from 2010 to 2014 shows very modest changes, ranging from 48 to 41 over 4 years (on the approve side, the disapprove side had less movement).
That’s not a huge flip flopping and polarization across millions or tens of millions of people, it’s a gradual change over multiple years, no single one of which changed more than 10%. And this is THE most controversial and divisive topic we’ve had in the last five years.
I don’t buy that many tens of millions of people will wildly flip flop in opinion on multiple issues every year, and since that assumption is at the root of your argument, I don’t buy that it would be a chaotic whirlwind of ineptitude.
Ok. I’m open that this may be a real problem. What are some actual examples of this you can think of? Or is it just a nebulous worry based on not liking the idea and not trusting folk in the aggregate to do the right thing?
I can even think of a small benefit here: I would assume that when distributing the new “allocation” sheets in our tax forms, each top level category or agency would have a line or two summarizing why what they do is important and should continue being funded, along with notable results from the past. Who wouldn’t want to see a brief justification of most government programs and agencies existence and results?
Your contention seems to be there will be a “ton” of things that can’t really do this in a way good enough to be funded, but that will turn out to be absolutely necessary. What might those be?
Do you know the impacts if the “food and agriculture” spending area you describe below is funded at 2% of the total Federal budget, as opposed to 3%?
Let’s say the people collectively decide that they want to reduce some government function by 1%. That’s about $36 billion.
Let me get this perfectly straight: you think “a line or two” is sufficient information for 85 million Federal income tax payers to make decisions that impact at least $36 billion in Federal spending each year?
Would you feel confident about making a $36 billion decision based on a single, 140 character Tweet?
Well, then I guess we are at an impasse. I KNOW it would be pure chaos and that the budget would fluctuate wildly from year to year as the public’s perceptions change for what they think are or aren’t important. Consider this week. There was a terrorist attack in Belgium. If this week was when people were deciding how to allocate their taxes there would be an uptick in people putting money into Defense (which would be ridiculous anyway, since it’s such a broad category). If, instead, there was a heart rending story of a Hispanic child dying because she couldn’t get health care then that would provide an uptick. And these are just two basic examples of how it would change.
That’s a 7% change there (plus or minus whatever their error bar is). Do you understand that this represents millions of people when we are talking about everyone who has to pay taxes and who would be deciding how funding would or should be allocated?? And do you understand that the change in how they would perceive what should or shouldn’t be funded would be even more radical?? :smack: Seriously, you don’t seem to understand what you are even asking here or how budgets work.
Oh, no more than 10% change. Dude, even a 1% change would be chaotic when you are talking about long term funding. You seriously don’t understand what you are asking in this OP or what real world effects it would have. You have hand waved away nearly everyone telling you it would be a bad idea. Essentially, you prove the point as to why the public shouldn’t be getting into the details of things like the budget…they simply have no idea of how things work or what or why we spend money on what we spend money on.
And in the end you still wouldn’t get what you are after anyway. Consider. Let’s say we go ahead and do big broad categories. People put in an arbitrary percentage for:
So, you have 33% going to SSI, Unemployment and Labor. What does that even mean? There are hundreds of programs (thousands really) in each of those broad categories. Who is deciding how funding is allocated in those broad categories? Or would that funding be equally distributed among those broad categores (SSI, Unemployment and Labor)? What if Unemployment needs more this year but because of public perception they actually got less funding for those 3 categories? Who decides the details?
Then you don’t understand how public perception works in your own country, and haven’t been paying attention to the political environment during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.
I gave you some, but sure, I can make up an example that will probably demonstrate what I’m talking about. So, let’s say that there is a program in Unemployment to help disadvantaged workers retrain skills for future employment. To do this they have a department, with a staff, obviously, who need phones and computers and a host of other things. They need new computers and a new server with new software. How do they get funding? Who decides what funding they get? If the public is just picking ‘SSI, Unemployment, and Labor’ what proportions of your 33% goes to which things, and how are they allocated to the various departments and programs within those broad categories? And what if it’s a multi-year project? How would funding be allocated in that case? You say you don’t believe there would be wild shifts, but I think you don’t understand that there are going to be a ton of citizens who are just going to arbitrarily put down whatever % just to get done, and a lot who won’t really know much about what those categories do and will put down stuff they THINK will help them, and a lot who will put down high percentages towards things they are politically or ideologically motivated towards and zeros to everything else, and that all of this will be heavily influenced by the news, media and the general perception of the tax payers at the time they are deciding how they want to allocate, so it would be all over the place, which means you couldn’t predict very well what the funding would be year to year, and multi-year projects would be very difficult to fund.
A line or two for your 12 categories would be both more than most people would slog through AND so ridiculously broad and meaningless as to make any decision based on them meaningless. You are condensing thousands or 10’s of thousands of programs and departments and staffing sections into 12 categories and then having the voters arbitrarily assign percentages of their tax dollars to them. If, conversely, you tried to get the tax payers further into the weeds by making your categories finer you’d rapidly lose nearly all of them because no one is going to take the time to read through all that stuff. Most people don’t bother to read through the various bills or initiatives for their state or local government when they vote, let alone something like this.
Should an obscure program at the department of defense in Arlington be funded for additional computers this year? Do we need to do an edge replacement in their building? Why or why not? What is the impact of waiting another year for that funding? Do you know? Who decides? If we are going with broad categories then someone other than the public is deciding this stuff anyway. If we go with fine details who in the pubic is going to wade through all that detail to figure out that if it isn’t funded than a key cybersecurity group won’t have the tools necessary to do a project that is vital to our security? Either way, stuff like this any myriad other things will fall through the cracks, since support services departments and positions ALWAYS fall through in these kinds of situations, since people don’t think about this stuff and it’s not as flashy or attention getting.
Looking at the budget, it’s not really devoted to the interests of the wealthy and influential. Social Security, Medicare, the VA, Medicaid…these aren’t programs that particularly benefit rich people or corporations. The military might, in the sense that military contractors get paid, but it obviously has a real-world purpose as well.
Now, special interests have a great deal of influence over what laws get passed, and they’d retain that power under your scheme…along with direct power over the budget.
And what of corporate taxes? Does the board of Microsoft vote on where their tax money goes?
So how specific are we going to get? If I am allocating some portion of my taxes to defense, can I say, “but only for buying more F-22s, and fuck the Army?”
Heh…yeah. ‘But I think that “defense” means that the Navy should get 2 new carriers and fuck the wing wipers AND the gun bunnies! And since they didn’t do that, well fuck them…next year I’m putting all my funding into “science” and I better get my manned Mars mission or next time I’ll…’
To be honest I’d be fascinated to see how the “vote” would go. A person’s individual choices woulod be irrelevant; money’s fungible, so what would really end up mattering would be the aggregate average.
I suspect most people don’t know what the breakdowns are, and that’s not a shot at most people; there is no compelling reason why a person needs to know that one department gets 3% of the dough and one gets 2%. What would almost certainly happen is that many, if not most, people would allocate their entire 100% to the department/expenditure they personally felt was #1, since they would eventually come to assume everyone else was going to do the same.
Or do what I do on those How Was Your Service Tonight questionnaire thingies…pick all 4’s as quickly as I can and leave.
Then we are at an impasse, because aggregate opinions don’t sway that easily, only micro populations sway easily. I base my estimation on empirical numbers, with the Obamacare chart the example of the worst case.
In the WORST case, aggregate public opinion swayed 7% over 4 years. I have seen no evidence and you’ve provided no cites that aggregate public opinion is highly volatile, and your specific example of Obamacare in fact refutes that.
This is laughable. You call yourself a business professional, and say a 1% budget change is unbearable? Let’s consider the 10% worst case - you’re seriously telling me that you have NEVER dealt with a department change or restructuring that cut yours or anyone else’s budget more than that? Yes, it sucks to deal with a lower budget this year, and for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world, creative destruction is part of the game.
On who decides the details and the cases of IT infrastructure upgrades and other unglamorous but necessary work, you make a good point. But as proposed, this was only ever a matter of a change in allocation at the top level. Presumably, each of these top level agencies and programs has Directors and other leaders who currently work out the details and decide to do necessary but unglamorous things with the money, and there’s no reason that would change.
The reason I’ve handwaved these and other problems away is that none of them have been anything like objective or fact-based substantive objections, they all much more seem to be “people are idiots and not to be trusted with anything important.” Have you seen our politicians lately? You think they’re smarter and preferable to you and me making decisions? They have a double whammy of not just stupidity, but cupidity and corruption as well.
The objections basically boil down to:
**1. Budgets would be volatile if they’re subject to change and public opinion. **
Political budgets are subject to change TODAY, indeed even subject to complete stonewalling to ZERO for weeks or months. Yes, they may be volatile, but in the aggregate, after things settled down, I doubt they would be that volatile. If the most contentious political spend in the last five years only moved 7% over 4 years in aggregate opinion, I am not that worried about huge volatility.
Additionally, budget timeframes are dealt with today as well. I assume multi-year projects get funded today somehow? Why wouldn’t they be funded by the exact same methods? Again, this is about top-level allocation, not changing who works out the details.
2. Nobody would fund unglamorous but necessary things or work out the details.
This is an allocation change, not a program director change. Directors still make all the detailed spend they do today, but will be allocated by the aggregate democratic process instead of Congress.
** 3. People won’t take the time to read through why and what they should fund, and will mess it up through sheer obstinacy. **
As stated earlier in the thread, this is easily addressed by making the default whatever the current allocations are, and you would have to manually go in and change your allocations if you wanted anything different. Only people who are involved and interested need to make changes.
** 4. This would allow the 1% to run the country even more directly because they pay all the taxes and they’ll be able to fund or defund whatever they like. **
Bluntly, no they don’t, and the weighted contribution of the 1% would be 22% of allocations, which is likely less influence than they have today on laws and budgets.
Moreover, even with that 22% there’s no reason to believe the 1% is entirely unified and ready to march in lockstep in order to overfund or defund any part of government spending.
** 5. I’ll just change my allocation to 0% on everything and nobody will pay any taxes. **
That wasn’t even on the table. You have to pay taxes either way, this is just giving you more say in where they go.
So what substantive, fact-based objection have I missed here? All I see is a lot of handwaving and invective against it without much real meat behind it.
I get that I seem to have found that rare issue that literally everyone is against, and am willing to drop it, but I still haven’t seen any really compelling arguments against it beyond a general distrust of the masses.
First of all, your math is simply wrong, since the allocation power you’re talking about would strictly add to the political power of the wealthy. The primary political influence that lobbying provides is in the construction of rules and regulations that protect the wealthy’s business interests and prevent their wealth from being taxed in the first place, not in the apportionment of various departmental budgets. So, we’re not talking about undoing the current political imbalances that wealth provides and replacing them with this one. We’re talking about leaving in place their existing influence and giving them even more. And also in almost completely disenfranchising the fraction of the populace that doesn’t (currently) pay taxes.
Apart from that, I don’t think you’ve given this objection nearly enough consideration. The value of a process is more than just the outcome. Switching from a democratic system in which each citizen has a roughly equal vote to some hybrid system in which you vote for some things, but those who pay taxes have direct power to actually fund things in other ways requires substantially more than an assertion that the outcome wouldn’t really be that different. This isn’t an implementation detail. It is the foundation and bedrock of our society. Yes, power corrupts, and money has more influence than most of us would like on politics. But at least we don’t have a system enshrined into law that directly and explicitly perpetuates that.
Sometimes, when you find that everyone is against you, but no one has a good argument for it, it means that you’ve got a really good idea, and people are unreasonably biased against it. Sometimes, it means that you’re simply better at arguing (or you’ve convinced yourself you are by sidestepping and reframing legitimate objections). Which do you think this is?
Do you want to win an argument on the internet, or do you want to find out if your idea really has merit? If the latter, I suggest engaging with (rather than discounting) the responses you’ve gotten, even if you think they aren’t as valid as your reasoning.
“Page not found”
But a similar page shows
- people with adjusted gross incomes above $250,000 paid nearly half (48.9%) of all individual income taxes, though they accounted for only 2.4% of all returns filed.*
But remember, FIT is only less than half the budget. And not everyone will show a preference. Between other taxes and those that dont declare a preference, the budget should continue on as always, more or less.