[net.taxes] earmarking tax money

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!murphy

snafu@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) 979-5894

murphy@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!murphy

rf@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. Walsh

laura@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!tim

lmg@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