[covidthrow]

I think they're being downvoted, in part, because a lot of people here either assume it is being spent well, or justify it as a necessary evil.

What might be valuable would be for someone to whip up an app that allows you to input the taxes you paid and breaks it down by the federal budget. Kinda like a receipt, but for government.

I did it with a few odd items, once, and it was pretty interesting.

For example, I found that I paid $7/mo for each of our aircraft carriers and $0.02/mo for the president's salary and secret service protection.

It might help people gain better perspective where their money goes. I'm not quite sure why this kind of thing isn't mandatory, frankly. An itemized "bill" may change people's opinions on taxes, especially the most favorable.

[whakim]

I mean, this already exists - there are tons of sites that slice and dice US spending with nice visuals etc. etc. Sure, I didn't see an itemized "bill" on page 1 of Google, but such a thing would be insanely incomprehensible for most people given that if you itemized the budget down to the level of the president's secret service protection, you'd end up with millions of line items.

[covidthrow]

It doesn't have to be incomprehensible. Just diggable.

Click through to finer and finer granularity. Searchable.

It's just ("just") a data vis problem. I'd work on it but too busy.

Maybe for the future. Could be fun.

[whakim]

This is literally the first search result on DDG: https://www.usaspending.gov