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From: murphy@hou2a.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.taxes
Subject: earmarking tax money
Message-ID: <161@hou2a.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 31-Oct-83 15:08:36 EST
Article-I.D.: hou2a.161
Posted: Mon Oct 31 15:08:36 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Nov-83 05:24:47 EST
Organization: Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 31


        Has there ever been any serious consideration of the idea of
   taxpayers ear-marking their tax money for use only in certain
   areas? Perhaps several broad categories could be established,
   such as defense, education, infrastructure, health services, welfare,
   etc. and a taxpayer's money could only be used for projects that
   fall within the categories that the taxpayer specifies, and in the
   proportions that she/he specifies. I realize that such a scheme must
   have pitfalls, in particular, it would take a lot of the fun out
   of government, but then spending would more closely reflect the
   will of the population, and congress would have less to argue about
   since some major decisions would not have to be made.

        It would seem that the number of categories would have to be
  limited to be practical, and the politicians could still amuse
  themselves arguing over how to squander the money within a given
  category.
       Given current computerization capabilities, such a scheme
  could probably be implemented, after all, IRS has some very
  sophistocated ways of figuring out how much it can remove from
  the wallet of each and every taxpayer, so a few extra bits of
  information telling IRS where to send the money (and perhaps
  where it can send itself) would not be much added burden.
      
      This would probably bring us too close to a truly participatory
 democracy for the comfort of the big guns in Washington, but then,
 we never promised them a rose garden.

      How about it, kids?

                                              Rich Ganns 
                                              BTL HO hou2a!murphy