(no subject)

[dr_tectonic]

Yesterday I played the Bean Game at Keith's with Keith, Trevor, Colton, and Rob. Today I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.

I also had a wacky idea: Given that the U.S. government acts so favorably toward corporations, maybe the way to get the people what they need is to create a business whose product is liberties and protections for various minorities and underprivileged groups...

Comments

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

I've been toying with the idea that the government should put a bunch of categories on our income tax form, and let us allocate where we want our personal tax contribution applied. So we could put a certain percentage in each of several categories like defense, local schools, arts, environment, police, welfare, Social Security, corporations, etc (I think paying off the debt should be mandatory). I'd be really really curious to see what the distribution looked like after it was integrated over the population. You'd have the Bush folks putting it all in defense and police, and the California folks putting it all in the environment, and everybody putting it in education. I bet the corporations would end up with nothing. Except maybe from the CEOs, who would be making enough money that they might be able to service corporate welfare all by themselves.

Besides the fact that nobody in Congress would ever ever vote for losing their budget capabilities, I think it'd be nifty.

[dpolicar]

I have for years wanted something like this on tax forms, but nonbinding. That is, keep the government responsible for allocating budgets, but let them (and the rest of us) know how their constituencies want the budget allocated.

Of course, it's one of those things where getting to define the categories is critical... many more people will allocate money to "productivity incentives" than to "corporate tax cuts."

[nehrlich.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the issues with defining the categories is key. And it should probably be non-binding. But indicating preferences would be interesting. I'd love to do a poll and see what we'd get.

I think the other question I'd like on the poll is to ask what people think the budget allocation currently is. I wonder how many people would know that it goes something like medicare/medicaid(22%), Social Security (19%), defense (18%), interest on the debt (12%), and that most of the things that people complain about (e.g. NEA) are a really miniscule portion of the budget (oh, and yes, I had to look up the numbers).

It'd be interesting to see the contrast between what people think we are spending it on, and what they think we should be spending it on.