For example, if you have a country on the older side, most people will vote to heavily fund social security at the expense of education. As the demographics change, would be no mechanism to correct the issue. Demographics become destiny.
Similarly, taxes allow rich areas to prop up poor areas of the country. California subsidizes the majority of states for example.
Part of the genius of taxes as a technology is that it allows (forces) a large group of people to coordinate to solve problems that they wouldn’t have otherwise. In the ideal case, it allows smart, forward thinking people to solve collective issues.
California doesn't pay taxes though, people in California do.
Not trying to be pedantic but this is a common framing that is, at its core, completely incorrect. States don't subsidize states because taxes aren't earmarked based on what state they came out of, it's all just government reallocation of wealth by one means or another.
Even if you were to accept this framing, California's net contribution does not cover the shortfall from 26 states, so the statement would be wrong even if it wasn't deceptive.
I am aware of the fact that states do not subsidize states, but actually drilling down to the taxpayer level makes the argument even stronger. As long as there are regional differences in benefits from federal funding, you get the same effect.
The farming states benefit disproportionately from farm subsidies. Oil producing states benefit disproportionately from oil subsidies. And states near DC benefit disproportionately from federal bureaucracies.
One could deduct taxes aren't solving collective issues, otherwise there wouldn't be any given The U.S is the biggest economy in the world yet millions can't even effort decent Healthcare.
You don't even need a country to be on the older side. Canada's age demographic distribution is normal compared to other countries but since the older population has greater political capital (they donate and vote more), they predominantly benefit from political action at the expense of the younger class. The Liberal party won the previous election in large part by stoking fear in boomers about Trump and the USA, while ignoring issues that the younger generation faces.
In 2015, Canada ranked well above the US and 5th on the World Happiness Report. We now rank 25th. If you break that down by demographics, Canadians over 60 still rank in the top 10, but Canadians under 25 rank 71st. It's the largest gap between the young and the old of all developed nations, and a key indicator of what the priorities of government have resulted in.
Another indicator: For the first time in recorded Canadian history, men over 65 now out-earn men aged 25 to 34. Youth unemployment is ~15%. More than one in five young Canadians is underemployed. Young Canadians under 45 have seen virtually no real income growth since 2000.
Still, I would welcome the opportunity to let Sacramento know that, in my opinion, they spend too much on education and welfare and not enough on infrastructure.
Change that to "allocation where they personally would like the entire budget to go." Otherwise, this is a recipe for an even worse power imbalance than we have today. The rich (who pay more taxes, and therefore whose sliders are more powerful) would have a greater influence on the budget than the poor, in your system.
The idea breaks down for the rich who are being taxed the most, because nobody wants them to have any say.
You could maybe do it for some percentage of taxes. Perhaps only for things that are desirable but not necessities (maybe Symphonies, science, high arts funding, sports funding, humanities education, BBC, other things people think they shouldn't pay for).
Although that would make people ask for a slider to reduce their taxes (to zero, thank you).
As with voting, implementing your idea would be subject to exploitation. For it to work, you would need a way of ensuring that each taxpayer/voter was authorized to vote, and voted only once. You would need to somehow prevent "harvesting" too.
Those who have an interest in exploiting the system would lobby for built-in weaknesses that they could exploit.
If that were the case, I'd go all in on hookers and blow.
Not to mention the complex semantics and effects of debt in sovereign finance, and actions like increasing or decreasing the money supply etc.
Still, yeah, as an experiment it doesn't seem likely to work. There is probably something to putting people a little closer to the action though.
It's absolutely glorious. I can buy exactly what I need. My monthly utility bills are way lower than anywhere else I've lived.
I cannot believe the populace has been duped into thinking so much of what we fund so direly must be done publicly that armed tax agents need to drag them to prison if they refuse to fund it that way. It is important to remember that everything that is taxed, the underlying method that will be used to enforce that is violence, and very carefully limiting that employ of mass violence.
Trying to think of a place where there is no chance of fire and all I’m coming up with is the moon
Obviously doesn’t scale to a city.
The biggest financial culture shock between the UK and the US is the property tax situation. The UK has a "council tax" paid by the _occupier_ (i.e. the renter, if a house is rented) that pays for local services, and it's in the low thousands of pounds per year regardless of the value of a house.
If taxpayers should have the freedom to decide how the money that is taken from them is spent, then why shouldn't they have the freedom to decide how much money they pay?
If taxes aren't collected because the ends justify the means, then the only other option is that they are collected to punish the taxpayers.
The former can be morally justifiable, but how do you justify the latter?
I hate these sorts of websites because they have a very intellectual starch to them but are very superficial. I also hate this frame of mind that's like, "nobody would choose to do boring stuff." People aren't stupid. I hate this "voters are stupid" frame of mind. It's unelectable, and it's always said by people who complain about political problems because they misunderstand and think that political problems are math problems. Like that all we need are more sliders. In this specific case, people love paying mortgages, they instantly understand the math of interest rates, and many many people are strongly incentivized to help people understand the magic of mortgages: that you get to both live in the thing you buy, which is useful, and that because you're living in it, people are willing to loan you 10x more than your income to buy it, a kind of leverage that isn't available anywhere else but people who will cut your fingers off if you don't pay them. We are living in your sliders world.
I'd say we spend a lot on things a few people who can maintain/expand power see ROI for power on. Sometimes that's things, sometimes that's just cash for voters and future voters.
The sliders world is more about consent via revenues of the governed, rather than the tax crop they really are.
people like paying for medical innovations. people are consenting to that. i mean, they certainly feel it is unfair when they have something they must pay for in order to survive, but in general, people have been choosing "expensive medical innovations" as an alternative to "dying" since the advent of the venture pharmaceutical system.
slider world CANNOT fix the problem that for some people, medical innovations are expensive. people will pay ANY price to cure a terminal illness suffered by their child, for example - there is no MARKET PRICE or AUCTION PRICE or VALID PRICE, i mean you can put a number into the slider, but you can see how "average of current + creditable worth" would be the answer to "what would you pay to cure your kid's terminal illness?"
and this is so, so much more interesting to talk about than taxes or vague nihilism about power. but no. it's too unorthodox. are you getting it? the website is stupid, why is it so hard to say that?
1. do you think slider world depends on the taxed having meaningful influence over spending? im thinking power split btw the diffused tax base vs the concentrated beneficiaries and the interests that allocated the spending
2. terminal illness breaks our price mechanism - what would we pay for our kid, another 20 years of life, to walk again, etc? but are we agreeing or disagreeing that solving things perfectly isn't the goal (with slider world, or today's system), and maybe isn't even possible? Fed gov doesn't have to work perfectly, it just needs to work.
To some extent? But the sliders would probably be even more extreme. If you are 70 years old you’ll probably vote to put everything on Uncle Sam’s credit card and let younger generations deal with it after you’re dead.
The alternative is Modern Monetary Theory, which states that the government and banking sector money creation fund spending, and governments cannot run out of currency.
Taxes control the money supply and mop up excess funds, which controls inflation.
Bonds set interest rates.
Spending is a strategic and political choice, not something limited by "the deficit" - which is literally just the difference between spending choices and taxation choices.
One very obvious tell is how Republicans make a lot of noise about the deficit and the debt, but always raise both when they're in office.
Always. Why? Because they spend government money lavishly on themselves and their patrons, and cut taxes for themselves and their patrons.
This doesn't "create jobs", it clogs up the system with sclerotic piles of cash that drive an extractive economy that sits on top of the productive economy most people live in.
This is very different economically to stability spending - welfare, healthcare, and such - and investment spending, such as direct funding of education and R&D.
In the MMT, the most significant drivers of inflation are corporate profiteering and supply shocks.
Like oil crises. For example.