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Your 2010 Federal Taxpayer Receipt | The White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/taxes/tax-receipt - broken link)
This calculator shows how your tax money was spent last year. Do you feel good about it?
How would it look if we, individually, were able to mark what percentage of our tax money went to which program/service? What program/services do you think would receive drastically more/less funding?
I imagine national defense spending would go way down just because a lot of folks are tired of the wars. I'm not too sure what would go up...maybe science and tech because it's interesting? Health Care?
A more realistic model might be the above scenario with about 50% of the budget allocated by the population, and 50% allocated by elected officials (maybe a necessity to fund things that people don't really think about...like lighthouses?).
It would never work. And, our country is not a direct democracy but a republic with representative democracy.
I would prefer a direct democracy. It couldn't do any worse!!!
Seriously, though, any tax increase proposal, and any proposal to raise the pay and benefits of our representatives in government and of government employees should be voted on by the people through a public referendum.
I don't know about "wartime mindset." But we do need to be able to defend ourselves and our allies when needed.
Defend, yes. I just don't know why we need to station troops in countries that won't be invaded. I understand our strategic interests, but we can easily project force around the globe with much less cost.
$1,000,000,000,000 is quite a lot of money to be spending every year on an army.
I would prefer a direct democracy. It couldn't do any worse!!!
Seriously, though, any tax increase proposal, and any proposal to raise the pay and benefits of our representatives in government and of government employees should be voted on by the people through a public referendum.
Direct democracy has never been a successful form of government. It is just as big a failure as has been communism and socialism. Believe it or not, our form of government is the best model out there atm.. Unfortunatly we haven't seen our government function properly in several decades.
Direct democracy has never been a successful form of government. It is just as big a failure as has been communism and socialism. Believe it or not, our form of government is the best model out there atm.. Unfortunatly we haven't seen our government function properly in several decades.
But where has there ever been a direct democracy?
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