Voting with our Dollars

I was part of a fascinating conversation at lunch one day last week. This conversation took place at work, which means a bunch of well-educated nonprofit professionals gathered around the board room table eating brown-bag lunches (because, hey, we work at a nonprofit). The topic of capitalism came up and I shared a portion of the lecture I delivered earlier in the week about the link between imperialism and capitalism as proof that capitalism is inherently evil. Someone said that a strength of capitalism is the ability to vote with our dollars, and someone (wish it was me) said "too bad we can't select what our tax dollars go to pay for".

Wait a minute, back up!

What if we could designate how our tax dollars were spent? Not necessarily how much we pay, but imagine one more section on each iteration of the 1040 that lists broad budget categories and asks us to fill in a percentage of our tax dollars for each program area. It might look something like this:

Please enter below in whole numbers (no decimals or fractions) the percentage of your tax dollars that you choose to allocate to each of the following program areas. (Social Security and Medicare are not listed because these are funded through a different tax stream.) Your entries must total 100%.
1. Education (pre-K - 20)
2. Health care and public health
3. Defense
4. War (expenses related to declared wars or ongoing conflicts)
5. Environmental Protection
6. Consumer protection agencies (FDA,USDA, etc)
7. National Endowment for the Arts
8. Overhead and operating expenses
9. Foreign aid (not including military aid)
10. Paying down the national debt
11. Law enforcement and prisons (FBI, Homeland Security, federal prisons, etc)

Now take this one step further: imagine that all our combined responses become the basis for the federal budget. Yes, that's right, if we collectively feel that the war effort is worth $x billion, while education funding should be $y billion, then those are the amounts that legislators will have to work with to fund these programs for the coming fiscal year. They can wrangle all they want about how dollars are allocated within each category, but they wouldn't be able to move funds between categories.

Wouldn't it be fascinating to find out how the American people would distribute their tax dollars if given the chance? Maybe someone needs to create a Facebook quiz to gather data on that... or to start a movement.

Lobbyists, go away! The role of lobbyists would be limited at best under this system, since funds would be partially allocated before Congress even got a first look at them. Of course, since we are an adaptive lot, the lobbyists may become more specialized and focus on programs within a given area of funding. I'd actually like to see someone out there lobbying to increase allocations for public school funding or ways to reduce the cost of tuition at state universities.

What would your choices look like?

And since this would be done as part of the income tax return, participation would be mandatory - not like voting, in which some of the most marginalized individuals in our society are disenfranchised through gerrymandering or voter identification laws, or by circumstance. If you're juggling multiple jobs you likely don't have time to pay much attention to politics or might not be able to get to the polls. But income tax returns? We all gotta do them.

Talk about government of the people, by the people and for the people! Somehow I think the founding fathers might approve.

Peace,
AuntieM