Let's say that you could choose which government organizations you gave your own, individual, hard-earned taxes to...OR...you could choose to give your own, individual hard-earned taxes to a specific congressperson who would then distribute your taxes as he/she saw fit. Would you choose to directly allocate your taxes yourself? Or...would you choose to give your taxes to a specific congressperson? If you would choose to give your taxes to a specific congressperson...which specific congressperson would you choose to be your personal shopper for public goods? For example...if you're a Ron Paul supporter...would you choose to directly allocate your taxes yourself...OR would you choose for Ron Paul to be your personal shopper for public goods? If you gave him your taxes then he would have full control over how he distributed them among the various government organizations. Personally, I would choose to directly allocate my taxes myself. But I'm really curious just how many of you would actually trust specific congresspeople with your taxes.
Do I really have a choice? The information that congresspeople are privy to is unavailable to me, I'd be forced into making decisions with severely incomplete information, I'm no better... hell I'm much worse than a government planner at that point, the government planner at least feigns the attempt to gather information to make wise decisions, I couldn't get the information and even if I could I wouldn't know which of it was worthwhile for decision making.
The congress critters get their information from their preferred special interests, and we see how well that has worked. Imperfect information is less a problem than wrong information. When you know info is suspect, you moe carefully. When you know something for certain, that is dead wrong, you jump in with both feet. When the government jumps in with both feet, they use our feet. As long as they can blame it on the other party, they have no skin in the game.
I'm not trying to claim they get the right information, but the fact that they have information available to them that I can't access is a statement of fact, particularly as it pertains to defense. Same issue, it's an information issues, neither of us has perfect information. The best possible solution would be for committees to form, made up of experts and interested parties and allow them to 'solve' the problem, tacit and explicit information is aggregated and the group is disbanded immediately afterwards. That however wasn't an option. Trouble is, you don't know what information is reliable, trustworthy and you like everyone has bias and are more likely to accept information, even wrong information if it conforms with your beliefs.
You really should read Hayek... If Defense, or any other organization, wanted your taxes then they would have to share their partial knowledge with you. Sharing partial knowledge goes hand in hand with persuasion. For example, if they had strong evidence that Canada was going to attack us...then why wouldn't they want to share that information with us? Our society is based on the division of labor concept. Everyday we defer to experts in other fields...doctors, lawyers, professors...and it wouldn't be any different if we could directly allocate our taxes.
Have, his understandings of information are exactly what was used to construct my argument. In the market, actors use tacit information to bring about positive outcomes, your essentially asking the voter to become the planner, and if you've read Hayek you'd know the information problem created. Will never, ever happen. Information is classified for a reason, dispensing that would be a very obvious risk the DoD would never participate in. So why should I, the nonexpert on a great many public projects have any say in how the dollars are used rather than deferring to experts on this? Can't have your cake and eat it too...
No, I'm asking that taxpayers should be the consumers...and the supply of public goods be determined by their demands for public goods. There was absolutely no Hayek in your argument...that I could see. He argued against the "fatal conceit" of planners that believed that they knew better how our limited resources should be used. Based on my partial knowledge of having developed information management systems while stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan...this doesn't make any sense. Why would they have to tell us the names of the secret agents that provided them with the intel? Nobody would ask for that. All they have to tell us is that they have intel that suggests that Canada is a threat. We either believe them...or we do not. You either believe your doctor when he gives you his diagnosis...or you do not. Why shouldn't the government spend all of our taxes on space exploration? Either what the government supplies matches our demand...or it does not. The disparity between what we demand...and what they supply...is a misallocation of public funds. The larger the disparity...the larger the misallocation. In non-economic terms...a misallocation is the same thing as a less than optimal use. Why would you want your public funds misallocated but you wouldn't want your private funds misallocated? If your perspective shouldn't matter in the public sector...then please explain why it should matter in the private sector.
But they aren't in an open market place, choosing between goods, your giving them a list and asking them to pick from the list, completely foreign to anything that's supposed to be "market like". Unlike my doctor... there's no going elsewhere to get a second opinion, the unidirectional flow of information creates a open door for exploiting problem with asymetric information. I'm not confident the public will do any better picking from a list of projects than would a collection of bureaucrats. We've seen how poorly they do at electing them, which really isn't all that different from what you want. It's a tax election, that your trying to present as "market based" and I reject that notion. Because it's emergent, decentralized and not planned. Unlike your tax plan.
What's the minimum amount of items that can be on a list for it to qualify as a market? The UN wouldn't have anything to say on the matter of whether Canada was a threat? What about Canada itself? What about all the other countries in the world? Wouldn't they have their own intelligence agencies? If Canada implemented its own tax choice system...do you think many Canadian taxpayers would choose to spend their limited taxes on attacking the US? So there's no difference between voting and spending your own, hard-earned money? There's no difference between you spending your money and me spending your money? What's centralized about my plan? Here are your only options... 1. The visible hand (congress) determines the distribution of public funds 2. The invisible hand (150 million taxpayers) determines the distribution of public funds
In order to mimic the market? Practically limitless with no choices being introduced and other things being removed frequently, the goal is noble, but likely impossible given the scope. Really no way to know, and know way to know whether we'd let that competing information in. There's a huge difference between voting and going out into the market to spending your dollars, primarily in the number of choices, secondarily you can choose to spend nothing and finally a third option, saving. We provide public goods the way we do to avoid free rider problems, which unfortunately is the strongest rebuttal to this plan, it simply doesn't address that concern. That someone is arbitrarily choosing what options are on the docket.
I don't understand your point. If I have to purchase a laptop then I don't have a limitless quantity of companies to choose from. Same thing with public goods. If I have to purchase a public good then I won't have a limitless quantity of government organizations to choose from. Is there a demand for public goods? Yes. Are there suppliers of public goods? Yes...government organizations supply public goods. All that is needed to turn the public sector into a free-market is to give taxpayers the freedom to choose which government organizations they give their taxes to. I don't understand this point either. Are you saying that some government organization that we are responsible for funding would somehow block our access to outside information? Voting doesn't adequately reveal your preferences while spending your money does. The point of tax choice is to reveal people's actual preferences for public goods by allowing them to put their taxes where their votes/hearts/mouths are. How is the free-rider problem applicable? We solve the free-rider problem by forcing people to pay taxes. Tax choice doesn't change that. I'm simply advocating that people be allowed to choose which government organizations they give their taxes to. If they have to pay taxes anyways...and they perceive that there are shortages of a public good that they value...then why would they shoot themselves in the foot by not satisfying their demands for that public good? If I have to pay taxes anyways...and I value environmental protection...if I perceive that the environment is in need of protection...then why would I hesitate giving my taxes to the EPA? The organizations in the public sector are "arbitrarily" there?
I don't understand the concern about tax allocation. I don't know of anyone with the same priorities for government that I have. Limit the pool to potential politicians, and the differences are far greater. Further limit that to those politicians that represent me, even those I vote for, are at best the lesser of two evils. The 2 of 3 politicians that I voted against, yet still "represent" me, vote to spend my money in ways I strongly disagree with. Allocating my tax dollars in a total vacuum couldn't be any worse. But, lets say I want a politicians insight. If we controlled the spending, politicians would clamor to post their recommendations. And, I doubt politicians would list their bridge to nowhere, or their personal airport, so drivel spending would fall. Politicians would have to sell their pet programs, and debunk the pet programs of their rivals. We would have more information than we do now. Would you support welfare if the total cost per recipient was $10K / year? How about $100K per year? In addition, how much would politicians get for their pet projects if their spending list became as vitriolic as their talking points? Both sides would lose. Eliminate the vitriol, and we all win.
As this thread reveals...it's not that people trust congress to make good decisions with their taxes...it's simply that they do not trust you to make good decisions with your own taxes. People believe that you're going to give too much money to some government organizations and not enough money to other organizations. They have trouble thinking in terms of aggregate demand. If you get a chance check out these 61 responses to tax choice...Unglamorous but Important Things. The hard part is to help people understand that there's no logical explanation for allowing somebody who doesn't even know you exist to spend your taxes for you. They just don't understand that there's value in each and every one of our perspectives...and the value of the perspectives of 150 million taxpayers is completely destroyed by 538 congresspeople who impose their own perspectives over our own. The only reason that congress spends our taxes is because long ago some barons got together and forced the king to give them the power of the purse. The king only had the power of the purse in the first place because people believed he had "divine authority". It was certainly progressive to decentralize the power of the purse from one person to many people....just like it would be progressive to decentralize the power of the purse from many people to 150 million taxpayers. Those are all great points. It's ridiculous to think that electing "better" politicians into congress will solve the fundamental problems of government. It's time to seriously consider putting taxpayers in charge and allowing them to hold politicians accountable. If congresspeople do a good job then I'm sure some taxpayers will want them to function as their personal shoppers for public goods. The basic idea here is that two heads are better than one. If you can think of ways to help people understand that this concept applies to allowing people to directly allocate their taxes...then please feel free to share them.
Why would anyone want to do that? It would give an absurd amount of individual power to popular idiots. Governments work better when they're not personality cults--when they're aggregates of many different types of people. The current mixture of congressional earmarking and bureaucratic determination works far better than your "popular idiots" method. What's the point in that? All it would do is let everyone put their tax money into their pet projects, while entirely neglecting the many important but scarcely visible government agencies. It would also create a situation where the better an agency operated, the less money they would get--because they would get correspondingly less attention in the media, and therefore fewer "donations". Direct allocation of taxes by the taxpayer is a dumb idea. It would be like trying to operate a business where your customers got to determine how the money they paid you gets spent. "Now I won't buy this item unless you put all of the gross income from my purchase towards the janitorial staff..." Impossible to operate. Efficiency would drop through the floor.
So taxpayers, the most productive citizens in our country, would give their hard earned money to idiots? If hedge-fund manager A offers a higher return on your investment than hedge-fund manager B...would you give your money to manager A or manger B? How come you didn't answer my original question? Which congressperson would you give your taxes to? Or would you choose to directly allocate your taxes? How "important" could a government agency truly be if there were no negative consequences of it being underfunded? Or it could be like operating a business where your customers can determine whether they want to purchase your product or not. Or it could be like operating a non-profit where donors can determine whether they donate to your non-profit organization or not. An organization is an organization is an organization. It either provides products/services that people value...or it does not. Check it out...I added your response to this list...Unglamorous but Important Things.
Actually that is how the land value tax would work. Under a land value tax you’d buy land at locations where government infrastructure and services best suited your needs and desires. Are good roads important to you? If so, then buy land at a location where the roads are new or kept in good repair. The taxes on such land would likely be a bit higher, but you get what you pay for, and the government gets paid for what it contributes. But, that is not how your proposed system would work. I own several pieces of agricultural land. I would give all my tax money to the Department of Agriculture and have them return it to me in the form of a farm subsidy. Why should I even pay taxes if the government is just going to send nearly all the money back?
Are labor costs important to you? If so, then open a factory in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan where labor costs are low. Oh wait...American companies already did this in the 50s and 60s. Which is exactly what I talked about in my post on the Magna Carta Movement. I'm all for people voting with their feet. In fact...I'm the one that added both Friedman's and Hayek's perspectives to the Wikipedia article on the subject...Foot Voting. Voting with your feet and voting with your taxes are not mutually exclusive. It just seems like voting with your taxes would be a first resort while voting with your feet would be the last resort. Give business owners the freedom to express their preferences with their taxes and then...if that doesn't work...they can move their businesses to better locations. It's all about revealing preferences. People should be allowed to reveal their preferences with their taxes and their feet. Like I said before though...if you're talking about Land Value Tax in terms of how taxes are collected...then your critique of pragmatarianism is completely irrelevant because pragmatarianism solely deals with who gets to determine how taxes are distributed among the various government organizations. Should congress or taxpayers determine the distribution of public funds? Pragmatarianism says that perspectives matter therefore taxpayers should have the freedom to choose which government organizations they give their taxes to. How could the perspectives of 150 million of our most productive citizens not matter? Regarding farm subsidies...here's a short two minute video on youtube that effectively explains this concept....[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uR4lqa7IK4&feature=player_embedded"]Why Politicians Don't Cut Spending[/ame] Once you understand that concept then you'll understand why pragmatarianism would solve that problem. If you search this page...Unglamorous but Important Things...for your username you'll see that I added your response to the list of people who have no idea how the invisible hand works. It's a long list...which helps explain why we experience recessions and depressions. If people could learn how the invisible hand works then they would understand the absolute folly of allowing a committee of 538 congresspeople to determine the distribution of 150 million people's taxes.
