[lastofthemojito]

As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go.

Agencies could recommend funding levels, Congress could recommend an allocation and if a taxpayer didn't change it, that default would take effect. But if a taxpayer preferred, they could say, "no, I won't be funding DOD this year". Or space nerds might say "I'm sending 100% of my tax dollars to NASA!"

Of course no one would likely choose to do boring stuff like paying interest on debt. So we'd probably end up with incredibly well-funded national parks and cool space missions, and also a crippling recession due to defaulting on the national debt.

[janalsncm]

It is interesting because in a roundabout way this is essentially asking what taxes are for in the first place. You will probably get some kind of “tyranny of the majority/rich”.

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.

[pc86]

> California subsidizes the majority of states for example.

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.

[janalsncm]

The point is that taxes can be allocated to things you do not directly benefit from.

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.

[hirako2000]

On principle collective issues can be solved, effectively many pay over 50% taxes (accounting for all taxes) yet not all issues are solved.

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.

[slopinthebag]

> 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

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.

[jerlam]

Organizations don't work well when their budget can change dramatically from one year to the next. There's no ability to take on long-term plans when another, popular department takes 50% of your budget, or someone in your PR department makes a gaffe. Long-term employees get laid off and won't return in a few years when your budget goes back up.

[degrees57]

Off on a bit of a tangent, I 100% agree with you, and that was probably the best feature of California's Prop 13 from 1978. After it passed, the projected income to Sacramento was rock-solid for decades. California doesn't have an income problem; it has a spending problem.

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.

[ambicapter]

Could have the slider pull the budget in that direction over the course of 5-10 years, instead of having it reflected immediately in the next year.

[fimoreth]

I always think as an individual I would like this. But at scale I worry it would incentivize each department to advertise themselves to the public, which seems to me like a waste of funds. I already dislike the reelection cycle (politicians incentivized to always be fundraising) and would hate to see that happen per department.

[cucumber3732842]

It would probably be wasteful initially but I doubt it would be more wasteful than bad policy that doesn't actually prioritize what the electorate wants.

[janalsncm]

Whatever hypothetical law allowed individual citizens to allocate funds could also ban departments from advertising or misrepresenting what they do.

[munk-a]

Thank gosh we didn't just have a huge scandal where DHS secretary Kristi Noem spent 220 million on advertising.

[janalsncm]

Well since it’s a hypothetical, we can also stipulate that laws are enforced.

[jerlam]

The police do something similar when a mayoral candidate promises to rein in police spending, it's called the blue flu and it's basically a strike.

[joquarky]

I find it odd that the people with the kind of mindset that is driven to become police are even willing to entertain the idea of joining a union.

[lamasery]

Well theirs is good, of course, because it protects them from soft-on-crime liberals who want open borders and communism and want to keep them from doing their jobs with ridiculous "ethical standards" and "laws governing acceptable use of force" and "civil rights" and other stupid pro-criminal shit like that.

[fhdkweig]

Does PBS still do telethons like in days of old?

[mothballed]

I live in a place with basically zero property taxes (except a pittance for the school). No public roads, no fire, almost no police, no parks, no public utilities.

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.

[jen20]

> I live in a place with basically zero property taxes

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.

[jrflowers]

> no fire

Trying to think of a place where there is no chance of fire and all I’m coming up with is the moon

[cyberpunk]

A lot of places (e.g the village i live in) have volunteer fire teams which only really need equipment and training, it’s much cheaper than having a 24/7 paid fire department.

Obviously doesn’t scale to a city.

[lamasery]

You would get so much weird shit happening if you did this.

For example, if you ask your average normal person who's critical of foreign aid spending how much they think we should spend on it, if they don't answer "zero dollars" (and most don't!) they're very likely to name a percent of the budget that would represent a huge increase in our foreign aid spending. This is because they think it's a far larger part of the budget than it is (probably because it's received such a huge amount of attention that they assume it must be a lot, or else why would their trusted media figures complain about it so much?)

Misconceptions like that abound. Like, you wanna guess where most people are gonna shift some of that money if you remind them to make sure they allow enough funding for maintaining our nuclear weapon stockpile, but don't tell them exactly where to put that money? I bet it's not the Department of Energy.

Moreover, this would just incentivize politicians for both nefarious and benevolent reasons to bundle unrelated stuff into departments that people choose to fund better, laundering their popularity into necessary-but-obscure services or pet-project/corruption stuff.

[einpoklum]

I would guess that's a poor thought experiment, because most of us - myself included - don't have a good grasp of what various things cost to make work. And then when you look at the relative points on the sliders you think "Oh, but X is much more critical than Y, surely I can't spend so little on it relative to my spending on Y".

Not to mention the complex semantics and effects of debt in sovereign finance, and actions like increasing or decreasing the money supply etc.

[csoups14]

You'd also have some very large but currently unknowable number of people underfunding Medicare and Social Security but still expecting to be able to draw out of it when they're older and demanding they be allowed to do so when they're seniors.

[cm11]

I would guess that we don't know because we don't interact with it at all and this would have us interact with it. No doubt that few people would really study very hard or that this would suddenly make everyone experts, but I suppose having to deal with it a tiny bit might lead to a tiny sense of the mechanics or scale. Like when you have to sit through the airplane safety talk, my guess is most people are still just going to thrash around over seats in an emergency of maybe ask each other what to do, but I guess people now know they're supposed to wear their seatbelts or that there's a mask in the ceiling? And you also probably do get a few more citizen experts than you had before.

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.

[robocat]

I think a ranking system might be easier. People are good at ranking priorities.

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).

[anonymousiam]

I like your idea, and I wish that it could be practically implemented.

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.

[ryandrake]

> As a thought experiment, it'd be interesting to imagine how things would play out if each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go.

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.

[carlosjobim]

This line of reasoning seems to be without any deeper thought.

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?

[tmaly]

I would be happy if all the laws both at the state and federal level were under version control and we could see who added each line.

[ponector]

In Poland in annual tax declaration one can select to which non-profit organization will go 2% of total income tax.

[mekdoonggi]

I like this idea, but limit it to $1000. Everything in government is funded, but each person can direct $1000 to general fund, a specific department, an initiative, or a registered non-profit.

[doctorpangloss]

Look, we spend a lot on things people want, right? We are living in your sliders world.

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.

[9x39]

>Look, we spend a lot on things people want, right?

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.

[doctorpangloss]

we can go into an actual, interesting conversation about government spending. personally, i think your pessimistic, slightly nihilist, "people who can maintain/expand power" POV is just a different side of the same "voters are stupid" coin, in that it is also unelectable (no Mag7 CEO or top-500 billionaire could win an election today, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk even pay huge commissions to study it for them, and anyway, most of the top-500s are heirs, and the ones who are only slightly less wealthy but way, way less powerful lose elections all the time) but appeals to this cynical, conspiracy-minded BS that distracts from hard truths like:

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?

[9x39]

I really wanted to peek at the site, but I came too late and didn't get to see it and still can't get it to load. I'm familiar with the discretionary vs non-discretionary entitlement breakdowns of the first 10-20 line items of the federal budget as you are, and it's uninteresting to me to complain about individual programs' worthiness because the problem is their aggregate bulk and the (unfixable?) incentives involved.

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.

[janalsncm]

> We are living in your sliders world

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.

[mitthrowaway2]

If the sliders applied only to discretionary spending, it might work.

[silentsea90]

"crippling recession due to defaulting" - we will just borrow more as usual. Not like our taxes are enough to fund the nation in any year (war or no war).

[babypuncher]

Eventually the lenders will stop lending. That's what leads to the defaulting scenario in the first place.

[guzfip]

Why will they stop lending? The US government could ably wipe them and their entire family and replace it with a more cooperative lender. There’s no higher authority to enforce anything.

[SergeyKa]

Make charitable donations voluntary? What a novel idea :D

[SoftTalker]

Sure. I'd set all mine to zero, and keep the money.

[GetTheFacts]

>each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go.

If that were the case, I'd go all in on hookers and blow.

[janalsncm]

> The federal government spends $222k per second

[GetTheFacts]

Way to non-sequitur! You go, girlfriend!

[TheOtherHobbes]

Taxes do not fund spending. This is a foundational myth of neoliberalism, closely related to the "A national economy is run like a household" myth.

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.

[verall]

This is also how I see it, and honestly it is hard to understand it any other way. In the current year, it seems very clear that governments can get away with incredible debt spending, as long as it's mostly in the right direction.