New tax system (democratic)
Sat, 02/18/2012 - 3:43pm
I've been saying this for a little while and I wonder why it isn't said more.
Maybe somebody can point out flaws in this idea that I haven't considered yet.
Why not have more REAL democracy by allowing every citizen, on his or her tax return each year, to decide where they want their tax money to go to?
Each year the IRS should provide a pie chart, or similar graph, to show how Americans' tax money was spent in the preceding year (or years). People could check off a box that says "let the elected government officials decide how to allocate my tax payments this year" but they would ALSO have the option to create a pie chart or other graph of how they want THEIR OWN tax contribution to be divided up in the coming year, among a list of existing categories: funding for education, military spending, arts programs, infrastructure, scientific research into sustainable energy, etc etc.
This could begin as merely a survey, without changing the current system of tax funds being allocated via elected (or appointed) officials, just to see how different the will of the tax paying public is from the decisions that are being made in their name.
Ultimately if implemented it would be true financial democracy, and society would benefit or fail based on its actual democratic decisions, removed from any threat of elected/appointed officials' self-interest/ideology or other distortions of democracy which are inherent in a republic form of government.
The government could still oversee the process via the usual departments, and there could still be some form of electoral college to balance out the results of popular vote results vs. electoral vote results, to avoid high-populated areas/states receiving too much representation in budget decisions. For example this would be important if a low-population state (such as Maine) might still be very rich in resources (such as wood), and might be uncomfortable with a high population state (such as California) having too much influence over how to allocate Maine's resources; other such situations would exist too, which would require some balancing between electoral and popular votes regarding tax money allocation, just as the current system attempts to balance such issues (for example each state gets 2 senators regardless of population, plus a number of representatives proportional to state population, seemingly an effective compromise). America is already used to the flexibility involved in juggling representation between federal and state interests; if this is a point of contention regarding the allocation of tax resources via democracy, that's no different than any other federal vs. state issue that goes on in America all the time (like the Civil War for example).
Anyway, like our "republic" system of democratically elected representatives, I believe that the current tax system was a system formed based on the technological realities of the day in 1776, at which point only representational democracy rather than actual democracy would have been technologically practical. But the world is very different today.
Everybody knows that power corrupts - that's one of the great arguments for democracy in the first place, the de-centralization of power, a process that has made slow (but definite and progressive) headway against countless millennia of centralized/arbitrary power systems.
The argument against democracy is also millennia old: the people are too uneducated as a mass for majority-rule to effectively steer society in and of itself. But this seems an awfully self-serving argument when made by an existing power structure. How many individuals would, if given the choice, prefer the decisions affecting them to be made by somebody else? Probably very few, at least according to the values of democracy/freedom/self-determination that we Americans have been pumped full of since birth. And perhaps these values are inherent in all humanity, perhaps even in most life forms. That may or may not be true. In any case, a democratic tax system - why not?? Do you believe in democracy or don't you??
Jeffrey
Mon, 02/20/2012 - 2:07pm
#2
Related Pie Chart of Tax Spending
In fact, here's a pie chart related to this topic:
"WHERE YOUR INCOME TAX MONEY REALLY GOES"
(Courtesy of the War Resisters' League, so they obviously have a point to make, but still...)
Wed, 02/22/2012 - 8:49am
#3
My initial thought is this:
I
My initial thought is this:
I don't agree that the idea of the uneducated masses is a self-serving argument when made by an existing power structure. Anyone who has had the opportunity to preside over a mass of people, even at a micro level, knows that groups can behave in frustrating, unproductive ways without leadership. The system we have now, of electing officials who can allocate the money is, in theory, not bad. I think you're idea works in theory, but the larger the population being asked, the less productive it is. Smaller organizations and towns actually *do* decide as a group where their money should go. I'm not sure that this would work with the national population.
Specifically, I don' t think the general public would be able to master the complexity of various bureaucratic institutions to make a difference. For example, NYC Public schools get plenty of money. Money for the arts, money for teachers money for everything. A citizen who wanted their money to go to the schools (or a percentage of it) wouldn't be helping things because the problem isn't lack of money, but how it's handled. The more complex you get, the longer the tax form, the less likely someone is to want to do this. What would happen is that people would check Option A (let the government do it) or they'd allocate their tax money into large categories just to get the process over with and we'd still be left with the money being mismanaged.
How would this system handle Tocqueville's old concerns? If the public votes away money in a way that discriminates, who steps in?
"Everybody knows that power corrupts "
I disagree. Power is just a tool, it can't corrupt anything. People corrupt power.
A bit more, as I think about it-
I didn't mean to suggest a libertarian policy of no taxation at all, because each person would still need to pay their proportional share of income tax (proportionate based on their income), just that each person paying their share of taxes should be able to vote on how the eventually over-all collected taxes of all Americans will end up being spent.
The amount each person pays in taxes would not give their vote more or less weight - it would still be one person, one vote. Therefore a billionaire who might pay a big tax amount would have the same voting power on how the US budget is spent as a poor person who is perhaps getting a tax refund that year. Everybody who files taxes, rich or poor, would be able to cast a vote on their tax return about how they would like to see the US budget divvied up that year.