murphy@hou2a.UUCP (10/31/83)
Has there ever been any serious consideration of the idea of
taxpayers ear-marking their tax money for use only in certain
areas? Perhaps several broad categories could be established,
such as defense, education, infrastructure, health services, welfare,
etc. and a taxpayer's money could only be used for projects that
fall within the categories that the taxpayer specifies, and in the
proportions that she/he specifies. I realize that such a scheme must
have pitfalls, in particular, it would take a lot of the fun out
of government, but then spending would more closely reflect the
will of the population, and congress would have less to argue about
since some major decisions would not have to be made.
It would seem that the number of categories would have to be
limited to be practical, and the politicians could still amuse
themselves arguing over how to squander the money within a given
category.
Given current computerization capabilities, such a scheme
could probably be implemented, after all, IRS has some very
sophistocated ways of figuring out how much it can remove from
the wallet of each and every taxpayer, so a few extra bits of
information telling IRS where to send the money (and perhaps
where it can send itself) would not be much added burden.
This would probably bring us too close to a truly participatory
democracy for the comfort of the big guns in Washington, but then,
we never promised them a rose garden.
How about it, kids?
Rich Ganns
BTL HO hou2a!murphysnafu@ihuxi.UUCP (Dave Wallis) (11/01/83)
Regarding allowing taxpayers to specify which of several general
categories their taxes could be spent on:
Would anyone be willing to earmark their taxes to be spent on the
government office responsible for seeing that people's taxes got spent
on what they earmarked it for?
I have a feeling all the bureaucratic types would love to get a hold of
this one! :-)
--
D. Wallis
AT&T Western Electric, Naperville Il.
(312) 979-5894murphy@hou2a.UUCP (11/01/83)
I would be willing to bet that if earmarking of tax money were
allowed, that the number who participate would be larger than
the number of people who generally vote; the earmarking would
be done right on the tax form, and would take only a minute or
two more time. Thus it would be more convenient than voting,
and with the added advantage that the taxpayer knows generally
where his money is going (theoretically). I suppose that it
could be made mandatory that the taxpayer earmark some minimum
fraction to go to administrative costs (i.e., politicians' and
bureaucrats' salaries and operating costs). Anyone who did not
earmark their tax could have it automatically allocated in
the proportions given by overall averages of the allocation
breakdowns specified by those who did earmark.
I think that non-participation on the part of some taxpayers
would no more jeopardize the scheme than non-voting by some
citizens jeopardizes the general election process.
I also think that the current powers-that-be have every reason
to hope that such a scheme is not taken seriously.
Rich Ganns
hou2a!murphyrf@wu1.UUCP (11/01/83)
It seems to me unlikely that any politician would be willing to limit the power of taxation. Perhaps, were one establishing a government from scratch, this system of taxation might be workable. Still, wasn't one of the chief problems of the old Continental Congress the inability to enforce tax laws? The ability to *take*, by force if necessary, is the thing that distinguishes governments. Randolph Fritz Western Union Telegraph
marla@ssc-vax.UUCP (Marla S Baer) (11/01/83)
[this line intentionally left not blank] The only problem I can see with having the taxpayers earmarking where their money is going is this: How many taxpayers are going to support Welfare (etc)? I know that I feel that the entire welfare program is poorly run, and that a lot of poeple are getting money, MY MONEY, that they don't deserve. Unfortunately, all those welfare reciepients [sic?] are voters, and there sure are a lot of them. What politician in his/her right mind would do anything to risk losing that vote? Why do you think there have been so few welfare reforms in the past? (By the way, I'm using `welfare' genericly.) Marla S. Baer !ssc-vax!marla
warren@ihnss.UUCP (11/01/83)
I have thought before that something like this would be an interesting concept. You will never get the politicians to give up the power to spend money the way they want, however you just might get them to let you fill in the information on your tax form and collect it. This would be an objective scorecard against which one could measure the performance of legislators in forming a budget consistent with the desires of the public. If someone is really interested in this, I suggest that they contact the consumer's and/or taxpayers advocacy groups, which probably have considerably more influence in Washington than usenet (I don't even know if there is a site in the city), and ought to be interested in something like this. -- Warren Montgomery ihnss!warren IH x2494
mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (11/01/83)
Another interesting consequence: each category would have to spend a lot of money on TV advertising to convince people to give them funds.
tim@minn-ua.UUCP (11/02/83)
That is quite an idea you have there. I can see it now, every year about the time you fill out your taxes you will be see many commercials like: Hi, I'm George Patten from your defense department. Did you ever consider how much money it takes to keep you safe in your beds every night. We would like to purchase the most sophisticated equipment to protect you, your children, and the American way of life. So when it comes time to earmark that tax money that you're going to send in, don't forget to give some to the people who are making America safe: your defense department. Of course there would have to be a cute upbeat jingle to go with it. I like the idea. I think that it would have to start as a percent of the total amount sent in. If we let them do it with all of their money, I'm afraid some important programs might get ignored. People would be too easily swayed by emotion rather than logic. Another thing to consider is that the rich would have a bigger say about things than the poor. If the most of the rich want a huge program of, say, health research and don't care about the poor, the poor are going to lose alot of welfare. Perhapse the amount you get to earmark should be indepenant from the amount you put in. Earmarking money, or some percent of the total, is definately a good idea. It is much more in the sprit of a true democracy than what we have now. Someone aught to start a movement or something. We could start with some test amount. Say the people of the U. S. get to earmark 0.5% of the total amount of money collected in taxes. As people show that they are bright enough to handle it, we could increase it slowly. stolaf!umn-cs!minn-ua!tim
wilner@pegasus.UUCP (11/02/83)
On the local level, taxes are ear-marked, sort of, on the appropriation end, rather than the revenue end. School districts and other entities have to go to the voters to get bonds approved. Why not (he said naively) require each department of the gov't, and let's throw in the Federal gov't and the moon while we're at it, go to the voters each time they want to raise their annual budget. They say by how much and we say yea or nay. They still get to decide how to spend their revenue. And what are the odds that any department will ever propose a reduction in their annual spending? houti!pegasus!wilner
claus@inuxa.UUCP (David Claus) (11/02/83)
It seems to me that to earmark the money you paid in to the government in taxes would amount to something analagous(sp?) to a poll tax, and would probably be found unconstitutional. However if everyone is allowed to earmark the same amount no matter how much they pay in taxes, it might be workable. Dave Claus AT&T CP - Indy
walsh@ihuxi.UUCP (11/02/83)
But does this mean we have to earmark money for the advertising, too?
Or would the gov't. just skim it off the top of already earmarked money?
B. Walsh
B. Walshlaura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (11/03/83)
I like the idea. While you're at it, can you decentrallise government a whole lot? There are a lot more people in Ontario than in Manitoba, and it would be nice if the tax money paid by people in Manitoba didn't end up supporting things done in Ontario. This strange thing happens now, so we then have to go and give money to the weaker provinces... It gets very messy folks. Also how do we prevent our tax money being spent on advertising campaigns? "Vote your dollars into Environmental protection!" no "Vote for NASA!" no "Vote for Improved Community Health Services!" it sounds horrid to me -- but then I would be strongly tempted to send all my money "to the abolition of pretty and clever advertising in favour of the hard, cold, unglamorous facts". Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
tim@minn-ua.UUCP (11/06/83)
But Laura, the commercials can be good, too. It would be nice to have
people come on TV and tell us how they want to spend our money. It would
be nice if they would tell us what good things they are doing.
The problem comes that they wouldn't try to get our money in any logical
way, they would try to win us by emotion, just as some politions do now.
stolaf!umn-cs!minn-ua!timlmg@houxb.UUCP (11/10/83)
Earmarking tax money sounds like a great idea and I'd love to try it, but I doubt the results would be much different from what we see now. Realize: We get the opportunity every two and four and six years to vote out of office the fools who are squandering our money. I did my part to try to defeat the incumbents just yesterday. The result? The rest of the damn voters re-elected them! Do you really believe that the same people who routinely re-elect the Congress will make wiser decisions if they earmark the money themselves? Perhaps so, but I sincerely doubt it. Maybe a better way will come when the whole country is linked by two-way cable systems. Then we could disolve the Congress, have a national town meeting and vote on each item in the Federal Budget ourselves. Larry Geary AT&T Information Systems Holmdel, NJ ...houxb!lmg
laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (11/12/83)
I hate advertisements. I think that they serve very little function from the point of view of the consumer, though they do serve one from the point of veiw of the producer. And writing TV scripts to accommodate the ads makes them lousy from a literary standpoint. You have to put the major climaxes (or crises, depending on which school of literature you come from) in the wrong places. This is how I buy semiconductors. I decide i want a 16bit CPU and then I read the tech reports from NS and Zilog and Motorola, and finally I decide on which one to buy. If I can't get enough information out of the reports (like EXACTLY WHEN IS THE NS 10Mhz chip coming out?) I either talk to someone who has taled to the National rep, or I phone the National Rep. This is a pretty high information exchange. Not so with laundry ads. I don't really care how much the tv actors all smile or how many mud pies Johnny can make and how a mother is supposed to beam at her kids. All of this is noise as far as I am concerned. Unfortunately, I cannot get a tech report on Detergents (or at least I don't know where) and I cannot get the information to interpret one even if I could. When you get down to ads about things like "foo chocolates" you have had it. tastes do not transmit thorugh a visual medium. I cannot taste something by watching it. I expect all the actors to be smiling, after all that's what they were paid good money to do. But the whole ad is noise as far as I am concerned. i would rather write away for tech reports on "how deprtment X spent my money" then have MORE NOISY ADS. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
preece@uicsl.UUCP (11/16/83)
#R:hou2a:-16300:uicsl:16300032:000:1718 uicsl!preece Nov 15 11:05:00 1983 One of the reasons we delegated the taxing and budgeting authority to those folks in Washington is so we don't have to know enough to make those decisions. I don't want to have to know that much about everything the government does. I would like, however, a plan that allowed earmarking a small portion of our taxes for a particular purpose. I don't have any objection to providing methods for us to express our preferences to our representatives; I do have objections to trying to replace their judgement with a direct poll. We pay them to represent our interests and to do the homework we'd rather not have to do. I don't see any reason to assume the various interest groups wouldn't vote their interests just as their representatives do, so the net result would be that those of us who take it seriously would spend a lot of extra time balancing priorities and the money would be spent just the same. I agree with laura that advertising is bad for continuity and pacing of dramatic works and that television would be better off if ads were limited to between programs; I'd also like to see advertising kept out of programming oriented to small kids (so far mine have not objected too strenuously to their tv diet not including commercial tv for kids). On the other hand, advertising does have certain uses. It does provide information about WHAT is available, even if further research is needed to find out if a particular product meets your needs. How did you find out that National Semi, Motorola, etc. were the places that might have CPUs to suit your needs? Most likely, either from their ads or from coverage in magazines that are basically supported by their ads. scott preece ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece