No government spending at all is the reductio ad absurdum of this personal-preference-cafeteria-style taxation allocation scheme.

Is this an example of the next generation of Ayn Rand's obsessive hatred of collectivism gone wild?

Makes you go hmmmmmm.

Testify brother! The Right shouldn't be the only ones with the "MY tax dollars" arrow in their quiver.

By the way, I "think" I know you were being facetious!

it is your government only in the sense that a cow says "this is my field."

i like to distinguish between 'privilege': a freedom bestowed by the ruling group, and 'right': a freedom held as a member of the ruling group. the difference can be murky, but if you do not have the opportunity to vote for a referendum because a small group doesn't want you to, then you don't have rights, just privileges.

Fear not, Mark.

very well stated....if tax payer dollars aren't going to be used to fund "death" in abortion, then let's not fund death-producing wars either, okay?

I'm definitely with you on this.

Kent,
Ah, if only we had that power. But if we did, I imagine it would have to be granted across the board (Republican meddling notwithstanding) which, in turn, might lead to an odd construct for a tax base.

The cost of liberty such as we know brews a soup intended for all to consume which is hard to swallow at times.
Rated and appreciated.

I dont want my tax dollars used for the WARMACHINE or the POLICE STATE

I'm on board with that!

Amen. I'm way too "reality-based" to want to pay for faith-based anything. Telling a woman to "pray" when what she really needs is some pharmeceutical relief for any physical condition makes me see infrared.

I also get really cheesed-off at the people who say "well I don't have kids, so why should I pay for public education?"

To which I always feel like saying "fine, I don't have any relatives in prison, so why should I pay for them??"

That old "promoting the general welfare and providing for the common defense" thing doesn't seem to appeal to people. But I'd far rather pay to educate kids I don't know who have done nothing wrong and who are required by law to be in school than to pay way more to incarcerate adults I don't know who screwed up badly enough to get themselves locked up. To me, the choice seems obvious. Turning kids into capable, independent adults is a much better return on my investment.

Another thing that cheeses me off is that people are willing to pay so much for prisons but let schools go begging. It's a shame that ain a nation this wealthy that teachers have to pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets and that schools have to hold bake sales to squeak by. There's more than one way to be "tough on crime." And that's to start investing in children's future early in their lives. A little nurturing at the right time can make an enormous difference to a child. A difference that might keep them out of serious trouble later on.

Anyway,
Rated.

Right there with ya on this one!

Rated

A long time ago, in a faraway galaxy, there were two antagonistic blocks of nations, called US and THEM. Both maintained conscript armies. Once a young chap, who's turn came to serve its mandatory time, asked the recruiting officer:
"What is the size of OUR army?"
"2,200,000"
"And what is the size of THEIR army?"
"2,200,000"
"Could you, guys, hook me up with one of their soldiers? I think I would have a good chance of striking a deal with MY enemy"

Your concept is actually a nicely refined version of this old idea, and covers a lot more. I am sure Amazon.com would have no problem with keeping track of the "wish lists" so that each taxpayer's preferences would be considered. After all, Amazon still knows what was on my wish list more than 10 years ago.

Mark, you do indeed grasp my intent on this, which is to say that indeed I did not intend this post as a list of demands but rather as a commentary on the notion of everyone trying to govern through lists of demands. The items I listed are, in fact, things I care about and yet are, with respect to this article, somewhat arbitrary choices just for illustration.

Nana, indeed, the trigger (to borrow the popular phrase) causing me to write this was the Republicans' relentless use of that annoying phrase “my tax dollars.”

Al, I usually grumble back at you for your Eeyore-like view of the world, but I actually find this particular comment of yours to be quite insightful in its carving up of the world. Thanks for persisting. ;)

Dolores, although my primary focus in writing this was really on the issue of decision procedure rather than on some particular decision, you're definitely right to pick up on the secondary message of the “death v. death” paradox. The anti-choice people are quick to defened war, which involves not only the loss of soldiers (whose hands perhaps they see as unclean, at least those of the opposition—ours, of course, never are) but the loss of innocents (the alleged wrong done in abortion). And yet analogous arguments defending abortion, which some might call evil, as at least a “necessary evil” in order to serve a greater good fall flat with them. A definite lack of symmetry.

Dennis, you seem to have a gift for making that particular statement about the cost of liberty in a lot of interesting ways. I should hunt them down and make a gallery of them because each of several times you've really hit me as having the precisely-stated concept I'm trying to get across, expressed so much more succinctly than I am apparently able to do most of the time. I keep referring to the complexities of meta-constraints on governing a pluralism and people seem to fuzz out a bit. Your wording seems a bit more plain and accessible. I'm studying that. Thanks for bearing with me and offering so many good teaching examples.

vzn, I hear ya. (See also my remarks to Dolores above, which somewhat apply to you, too. I'm wordy enough so will try to avoid duplication.)

Michael, nice to see you—thanks for the show of support.

Shiral, even before I had a child, I used to gratefully pay my taxes for things like education, “supporting the public welfare,” as you say. And listening to Bush talk as he did all the time about how he was beefing up the infrastructure of Iraq even as he neglected it at home goes to your point about prisons vs. schools. I'm not 100% enthralled with Obama's choices as President, but he does win on a number of points, and in a recent speech I recall him saying something that amounted to an acknowledgment that it was the US he was President of, not Iraq or Afghanistan, and that we needed to hear some speeches about what he was doing for us.

Placebo, thanks for the showing of support.

G-man, although I certainly am not proposing government by wish list, I definitely appreciated the metaphor. It wouldn't be bad to know people's preferences where they wanted to log them. Some people might not want to say, or might want to only say privately, which would create a problem for verifying that the aggregate numbers were not forged. It's a very interesting technical challenge and filled with opportunities for fraud. Nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to discuss it. All in all, a very nice analysis—thanks. And indeed Amazon has that thing that allows you to click on “Why am I being offered this?” Wouldn't that be handy in debugging government? :)

Kent, I certainly agree with your many points and like the way you summed it up here: "if the Republicans enjoy such a right in order to meddle with public funds on abortion, I want an equal opportunity to do some housecleaning of my own."

Back in December, 1972 when Nixon ordered "the Christmas bombings" I heard Noam Chomsky speak before a few hundred people in Providence about this. One of the things I recall him saying was that people could refuse to pay the tax on their phone bills as that money was going into the treasury to help fund the war. My guess is that the phone companies would simply send another bill for the amount not paid. In the end, we need far better legislators than the garden variety who are in office now.

Designanator, thanks for the observations. I take issue with one point, though: The design of the US Government generally and intentinally assumes that people will be human, not “paragons of virtue” (to borrow a phrase from an old Star Trek episode). Bork and several sitting justices on the Supreme Court seem to push against this, insisting that the key to saving the US is for us to put “better” people (or people capable of rising above their own humanity) onto the Court. And generally I think everyone should be held to high standards. But at the same time, I think if the key is to get better people for legislators that's pretty a pretty damning statement about democracy because all it takes to get better legislators is to get an electorate that understands the difference. And that, of course, is the challenge. We get the government we ask for. That's why we're in the state we're in and we can't push it off on legislators. We, as a people, have asked for politicians that lie and cheat and promise things they can't deliver. For example, when Obama gets to office and finds he can't keep people under $250K from any tax increase, that maybe we'll have to up taxes on someone making $200K, the Republicans make hay about him having failed us. That's to be expected. But we don't laugh them out of town for calling this a failure. Instead we look angered and say, “but he promised.” As if he could promise. But he had to promise because we said we'd not elect him otherwise.

Kent, you must be one of the little people because "only the little people pay taxes." Well said and rated.

OE, I'm definitely not in the ruling class, that's for sure! And yes, it's expensive down here... And don't forget we lesser people pay not only public tax but private tax.

Kent, I am following up on your reply and specifically: "We get the government we ask for." Again, that is true and I would add that main stream media plays a huge role in the popularity of certain candidates over others, as we know all too well, and often with disastrous results!

Des, it's a good point. It once again argues against the notion that campaigning should be so intertwined with commercial activity. The need to entertain drives things in weird directions. People are bored by even critical things. How many people are watching C-SPAN last few weeks as the future fabric of our lives is being decided?

"It is, after all, my government and they are, after all, my taxpayer dollars, so it's only natural I should get final say on how they are spent. "
LOL!
Yup. Too bad for us, huh?
;-)