First, a few caveats:
- I know very little about government.
- I know even less about economics.
- It’s entirely possible that somebody else has had this idea and it’s been shot out of the water and I’m completely unaware that this has happened.
- I don’t really have any idea why I’m posting this except that it’s come up a few times recently so I figured why not?
That being said, let me make a suggestion:
I’m always hearing people say, “I don’t want my taxes to fund war,” or “I don’t want my taxes to fund abortion,” or “I don’t want my taxes to fund wildflowers planted on the side of the road,” or whatever it is that you’re taking a stand against. I’ve heard this frequently with the HHS debate: “Why bother fighting the mandate? Your taxes already pay for contraceptive services.”
And while there is a distinct moral difference, I think it introduces a good question: is there a way that we can avoid funding immoral programs while still paying taxes?
What if it were possible for us to choose directly what our taxes fund (or don’t fund) as opposed to just electing people to office who make certain promises about policies that they’ll enact? Let’s be honest, there are very, very few politicians that a Christian can support on every single issue. I don’t actually know of any–not at the national level, anyway. And even if I could find a politician who would always vote my way, the system isn’t really set up to allow one honest politician to accomplish much.
But what if instead of just voting we were able to choose to opt out of funding certain things with our taxes? I’m not saying that anybody would get to choose to pay less in taxes. I’m saying that when I sit down to pay my taxes, there’s a section on my federal income tax forms where I can choose to opt out of my tax money going to certain things, such as the development of nuclear weapons, embryonic stem cell research, abortion services, or anything related to the Patriot Act. Whatever I opt out of, I still pay the full amount that I owe, I just have a little more control over my money.
These issues would be added to the income tax “opt-out” section based on a referendum. So you get however many thousand signatures on your petition saying, “I think you ought to be able to opt out of funding schools. [Everybody hates schools, right?] I really, as a Libertarian,1 believe that government funding of schools is indoctrinating America’s children in the capitalist-democratic propaganda and that it does a disservice to America’s children and that is immoral for my tax dollars to go towards schools and also weed should be legal.”
So you go out and you find 10,000 of your closest Libertarian friends, they all sign this petition, and it’s introduced onto the ballot in the next general election. Then the voters are able to vote for this to be an option for people to opt out of on their taxes. And maybe there’s a threshold, say 50% of voters have to think it’s a reasonable thing for people to want to opt out of paying for schools. They’re not saying that they don’t want to pay for schools, just that they believe that funding schools isn’t necessarily part of the social contract that we all enter into by being citizens. If you reach that 50% threshold, then the next time tax forms come out, it will be added to the list. Along with abortion funding and nuclear research, you’re able to opt out of your taxes going to fund schools.
Then you go to this form in your giant stack of tax paperwork, a form that the majority of Americans won’t even notice, and you as a Libertarian choose to opt out of funding schools. So of the $3000 that you’re paying, maybe $90 was going to go to fund schools. If you opt out of paying for schools, that $90 is then reallocated in the percentage that your taxes are normally distributed:
The 3% of your $3,000 that no longer goes to schools then gets split up along these lines (with the $2.70 that was supposed to go to schools being thrown into the non-controversial area of greatest need?). You’ve paid the same amount of money, but because you find government funding of schools morally abhorrent, your money doesn’t go towards schools.
Let’s imagine (and, God help us, it doesn’t require much imagination) that the government decides to provide abortions free for all government employees. We encourage our representatives to vote against this, but it passes anyway. Now it seems to me that eventually, if enough people are opposed to this and enough people opt out of funding abortion services, there would no longer be enough money for the government to provide them. The policy would have to be changed.
It’s very difficult to get policy changed by marching on Washington, writing to your senator, or voting for people who you think are going to do what they say they are going to do in their campaign promises. So let’s put our money where our mouth is. Let’s say, “Our money will not go to this” and see what happens to the policies.
We’re not going to see a time in our country where you just don’t pay taxes or where you get to choose exactly what the government is spending its money on, but if you are able to say “My money will not be used to fund these things,” if that becomes an option for us, then it seems to me that our “representative democracy” will become much more representative of the people’s actual desires.
In a country as ill-educated and self-serving as ours, maybe that’s not a great thing, but I think it’s an experiment worth trying.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but please be gentle–I’m not an economist, I’m not a political theorist. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I’d like to introduce the idea and let those better informed hash it out and run with it. Is the whole thing ridiculous? Would we need congressional restrictions on what could be opted out of (defense and education being off-limits, for example)? Can you get more specific on number of signatures and percentage of the vote needed? Should the opt-out issues have to be voted on annually–or maybe every four years? Where should that awkward fraction left over go? Is it impossible to have the kind of transparency it would take to break your tax dollars down into percents? Would we have to deal in general categories (healthcare) as opposed to specific services (abortion)? What else am I missing?
- not all Libertarians believe this [↩]