Taxes Are What We Pay For Civilized Society

2020 Discretionary BudgetHere we are in another election cycle and the candidates are going off about how they will spend government money, and citizens are going off about what they want their tax dollars NOT to fund.

OK, fine. You don't like how your tax dollars are spent? Then let's do a little thought experiment and see what happens.

What This Isn't

I am not here to debate about which slices appear in our pie (which departments are funded). Those were determined by the US budget illustrated above. I just want to start people thinking and talking about how big we want those slices. Each of us. Individually.

Kind of like when Sam Tarley invented democracy and all the lords just laughed at him, I simply want to see what the US budget would look like if each tax payer could say where their money went. To that end, I am not collecting any data from you. I am not going to break this down by region, race, gender, level of education, kind of car you drive. I don't care about that.

What I do care about is finding out what the rest of America cares about. If everybody had a say, what would we, as a people, fund? Would we fund war or peace? Would we fund agriculture or infrastructure? (Oversimplifying again, the two are not mutually exclusive.)

On the other hand, don't be a jerk. One vote per day per IP address. Thank you. Are you ready? Let's cut the pie.