Representative Taxation As A Concept

Fair warning before I begin: even if you agree with my views here, the system I am describing in this article will, with likelihood approaching certainty, never exist in any country, anywhere, ever. Please bear that in mind as I describe it; there is no functional way to put this system in place in an existing country. A new country would have to be created, and that country would have to be created by people with the moral interests of their citizens at heart, rather than the governance and control of those citizens.

So take it as a hopefully interesting intellectual exercise.

As a rallying cry, the Founders put the phrase "No taxation without representation!" to good use.

I admire the results.

But these days, technology has advanced beyond what was possible in those days, and complications - both technological and political - have arisen that the Founders never envisioned, and never could have.

Accordingly...

There are a few base premises from which any source of government funding through taxation must be built if a society is to have any legitimacy at all.

First, the tax burden must apply in equal measure to all its citizens.

In recent years, many people have tried to pervert the intent of this concept, calling for "fairness," which they claim can be achieved by the most unfair of means - namely, applying progressively heavier percentages of the tax burden on individuals as their income goes up.

This is manifestly wrong; it relies on the false premise that "wealth" is inherently a property of the society, not of the individual whose actions have produced that wealth, and punishes them for their achievement, a standard guaranteed to produce mediocrity over the long term.

For the tax burden to apply in equal measure, the solution is simple; a flat tax. This can be nothing but fair, as 15% (pulling a number out of a hat,) of $100,000 is more than 15% of $10,000, and yet the impact in terms of the share of your earnings is identical.

Second, the items and services purchased through use of those tax funds must meet one of two standards: they must either benefit all citizens in equal measure, directly, or they must be chosen by the citizens whose funds are being used.

There are precious few things which meet the first standard; the roads, law enforcement, the military, emergency services; you can argue health care, if you are basing your idea on "citizens already pay for health care through their taxes, and as such there is no charge to them directly for such care, and health insurance has no need to exist," but putting that system in place would require a new nation to be constructed from the ground up; such an effort cannot succeed in this country thanks to the existing, entrenched interests. (Likewise the internet; you can make the argument that the internet is justified, if the government were to provide it at no additional charge to every citizen, but this is actually impossible, as not all citizens have homes; the best you can go for is only excluding the homeless, who quite frankly are already excluded from enough.)

Because there are so few things which meet the first standard, the second - through representation in Congress - has always been the primary standard for expenditure of "public funds."

I have a suggestion as to how that may better be accomplished.

Thanks to modern communications, recordkeeping, and use of computers for bookkeeping, there are new ways available for a citizen to represent their interests.

As such, I think our entire system of taxation and government funding should be scrapped.

From the flat tax, a fixed percentage of the funds from each citizen should be assigned to each of the "universal benefit" functions of government; say 25% each to health care and the military, another 15% to law enforcement, and another 10% to emergency services; a further 10% - and never more than that - should be used to maintain the machinery, staffing, payroll, and function of the federal government itself.

That leaves 15% of each individual's funds.

That 15% should be a mandatory contribution to the society, whose use can be determined by the individual.

For example, each year with your tax form, you receive a ballot, offering a list of the discretionary programs offered by the government, as well as the option to turn over the remaining funds, or any part thereof, to one of the universal benefits.

Upon receipt, your funds are diverted as you selected.

Under this system, none of the various government departments possess the capacity to borrow money; they cannot operate on credit, full stop. Each project, plan, agency, or idea, must operate within a fixed budget each year, because there are no further funds.

...This seems weirdly limiting, until you understand that this process necessarily makes the "business" of government entirely predicated on the rational self-interest of the persons employed in any capacity by that government.

As things stand now, the federal employees have no real reason to know, care, or even think about, whether the country as a whole prospers.

Under the system I am describing, if they do well, and the country as a whole benefits, then people's incomes rise - which inherently raises the budget the government has to make out paychecks to those employees.

If it does not, they do not - and the federal budget correspondingly suffers.

Thus, each individual federal employee has their own best interest at stake; they have a vested interest in doing the very best job, at their job, of which they are capable, because their ability to pay bills and eat depends in direct measure on the success of their performance.

At the same time, projects - like the programs collected under the rubric of "welfare" - which do not offer benefit to each citizen, are funded in the exact measure the citizens who pay into the system are willing to pay for them.

Currently, you see, your tax dollars, and those of businesses, fees at the gas pump, and everywhere else the government soaks you that you don't necessarily see, go into a giant slush fund, from which Congress pays for, well, whatever they want. This is not "representation," as witness the fact that Congress' approval rating stands around 9% right now.

But think of this.

Right now, welfare fraud is a thing - but it's practically impossible for Joe Average to get any hard facts and figures on how prevalent it really is, because both the major political teams have issues with honesty and truth; they both lie through their teeth in any way they think makes them look good, is what I'm trying to say.

But voluntary allotment of funds from your taxes, essentially eliminates the ability of anyone to "ride" welfare; there's simply not enough money in the system to provide for that. This changes welfare programs into something inherently structured to provide strictly temporary assistance, while allowing them to continue to exist.

Or maybe citizens will voluntarily allot more money to those programs.

Either way, the money those programs get, is all there is.

Someone who could work - able-bodied adult, in other words - who doesn't, can receive only so much help as their fellow citizens are willing to give them freely.

This is fundamentally different from the current system, under which they spend literally a trillion-plus dollars a year on such programs whether or not you want to give them money for that, based on the threat of force and coercion.

Under my system, you are still required to pay taxes; that doesn't change. The AMOUNT you would pay would change drastically, and more importantly, you would have control over any funds that aren't returned to you directly in the form of services only a government can provide.

Personally, I am a horrible person, who feels that there is no such thing as a paying job that is beneath the dignity of a thinking person who desires to continue to eat, and as such, I would commit no funds of mine to support people who do not agree with me; my funds would be entirely spent on the military and law enforcement.

The lovely thing about my system as described here, is that if you choose to devote the entirety of your "discretionary" contribution to welfare programs, you can.

You can choose to do that.

As I can choose not to.

See, the fact that it's voluntary makes all the difference.

And in this day and age, the possibility of each citizen representing themselves actually exists.

As such, it is a moral obligation on the part of our society - a society based entirely on the concept of voluntary, elective social obligation - to provide each citizen with the ability to represent themselves in this way.

The fact that such individual self-representation does not yet exist merely stands to prove that our government has lost sight of those ideals, and instead is pursuing an agenda of control and gradual tyranny.