Month: October 2014

A society is full of people who care about the government. They vote, they get involved, they contact their senators and congressmen. Sometimes they propose laws for their towns and sometimes they start a website to support an issue. Hooray! Democracy at its best!

But then again, society is also full of people who don’t care! They don’t bother to vote, they don’t know the name of their senators and they couldn’t care less about whether the government is spending their money on helping the homeless, or on subsidizing big oil companies.

I propose that we create a system, where involvement in society and government is rewarded.

We would create a special currency called “citizen coins”. You can earn citizen coins in many ways:
– vote in elections, you get 10 coins
– attend town-hall meeting, you get 2 coins
– help at the local VFA, you get 5 coins
– volunteer for a government-sponsored activity, you get some coins relative to a level of your volunteering.

Each year, government sets up various ways to earn the coins.

You can then use the coins to get benefits from the government:
– you need an installment plan for tax payment: use 50 coins and you’re all set! (Instead of current law, where you can do that only once every 5 years or something like that)
– postpone a jury duty – 30 coins
– you’re in a jam and want to postpone tax payment for a month – 10 coins
– you need an express passport renewal – 5 coins
– you want a free ticket to Smithsonian? – 2 coins
– tour of the white house? – 2 coins

You get the point. Basically there would be a marketplace for the citizen coins, where you can earn them by helping government and spend them on services that government provides.

Coins are non-transferable and are tied to each individual citizen forever. They don’t expire either. They can’t be inherited. And they can’t either be purchased with money or sold for money.

I believe system like that would improve the one value in a society which would help our democracy best: citizen participation.

If every time I heard someone say “You’re wasting MY tax money for THIS?”, I got a penny, I’d manage to pay my next year’s taxes with that pile of pennies! 🙁

All exaggerations aside, I think we need a tax reform!

And I’m not talking about whether we should pay less taxes or more taxes. I’m not talking about tax brackets or tax loopholes or tax-deferred money growth or any of that stuff!

I’m talking about solving the problem of people whining that someone is “wasting THEIR money on THAT?!?”.

So how do we do that? Well, we simply give people ability to block their money being used for what they don’t like!

Here’s the outline of how this would work:

Once a year, government does the budget. One of the outcomes is a document for general population, listing all the areas of spending. This should be readable at the high-level (just the big buckets, sort of what you get here) and down to smaller details for the people who care more. Each item will be clearly identified by some number.

When you submit your tax return, you can fill in a new form that will be introduced. This form will be the “Where is my money going!” form. All taxpayers will have the ability to select up to certain percentage of the total budged for which they DO NOT ALLOW their contribution to be used for. In essence, if you don’t believe in spending money for, say, military, then you simply specify that you don’t want your money to be used for that!
This form is optional.

If you don’t want to bother, and simply trust the government, then simply don’t file this form, and it will be assumed you don’t care and your money will be used however government sees it fit.

This way, if you are the guy who is complaining about his tax money used for something, then next time, simply fill out this form, and then you will be able to be certain that your money is NOT used for that.

Money tracking and computer systems at the IRS are more than capable of tracking this information. I even wonder, if this would on the average really change anything, since I suspect that the distribution of the money will ultimately stay the same. However, it does add additional check on the government. If there will be some initiative that will be really so hugely unpopular with the whole population, then what’s better way to stop that, than to dry up the funds for it?