A New Tax System:mandatory charity
I’m posting this here not because it’s tech-centric, but because it’s a look at a process, a system.
What if (some amount of) charity were mandatory? Let’s say you had the power to direct some percentage of your tax dollars. Where would you send them?
I see two major advantages of such a system:
1) It would give the people a real and direct voice about their priorities. As my wife is fond of saying, we vote with our pocketbooks.
2) It would give people ownership in the running of their country. Along with that ownership, we might see an increase in self-educating about the real issues facing the country. At the very least, I think the degree of dissatisfaction with government decisions might decrease.
To those who argue that rich people (or, those that pay more taxes) would be over-represented in such a scheme, I would respond that they would be more represented than they are now, but maybe not over-represented. Maybe those who pay more into the system deserve to direct it more. Our bi-cameral legislature has representation based on statehood (2 senators per state) and representation based on population (in the House). Maybe it would be sensible for our tax system to represent both the general populace (with the majority of tax money) and proportionally to taxes paid (in the form of “mandatory charity,” or self-directed tax dollars).
What do you think of this idea?
Where would you apportion your dollars? (For my part, having benefitted from National Science Foundation money in the past, I would probably allocated to the NSF).
June 20th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Unfortunately, this would mean that more and more of our donated money would go towards advertising instead of to the actual cause - all of the charities would be vying for our money and put all the time, money, and energy they could to making themselves known. You would have to first have the government come up with rigorous criteria that would qualify a charity to be eligible to participate in the “mandatory charity” program, but you would also have to pass a law restricting the amount of money, donated or otherwise, used in advertising. Great idea, but too much work for our lazy politicians! (Plus, they want the option of being able to “donate” our taxpayer dollars to the lobbyists who got them into office!)