Taxes and Benefits: The Great Disconnect

The morning papers have the same complaints and demands, year after year.  Everybody wants the government to do more for them.  The same people complain about paying taxes.  Last year about tax time we were having a staff meeting.  You should be aware that our staff are social workers for the most part, and well-educated ones at that, with a Master's degree and years of experience.  The complaint heard around the room was how once again the Department of Mental Health was taking cuts in budget, as we had for a number of years, on the grounds that tax revenues had again fallen and there simply wasn't enough money.

During a lull in the complaining I stood and asked the following question: How many of you would be willing to pay a five percent increase in your state income taxes if the money were earmarked for mental health?

Not one single hand went up. I then asked for suggestions as to how the money could be found without raising taxes.  There were a number of  suggestions, some obscene or at least impractical.
These included "stop the graft", without specifying exactly which graft was being referred  to;  another suggestion included taking it from the roads budget, although our roads are among the worst in the US.   It was clear that as a group we did  not see the direct connection between taxation and budget.  The money should come from the same place we expected it to come from when we were unemployed teenagers:  the Great Daddy, who now apparently resides in Washington.

As a people we need to reconnect our expenditures with our  income. I have a suggestion, clearly impractical since it makes sense.  We should vote on budget issues online.  Each budget expenditure should be associated with the exact amount of cost, paid by taxes, for each person's bracket.  We need to own what we choose to pay for.   Oklahoma highway bridges?  X Million total, for you personally $437.44 of your income tax. No items can be approved unless enough people vote for the expenditure out of their pockets.  Not enough voted?  The item cannot be paid  for  and we  can't have it.  Just like our personal budgets.

I can think of many possible variations on this idea. It might be disastrous for a few years, but eventually people will see the truth, that they are paying for everything the government spends out of their own individual pockets.  I suspect legislator salaries and benefits would be among the early casualties of this plan, but if I can think of that, so will the legislators,  and they will never allow that to happen as long as they vote for their own pay.

Such a plan was not practical, or even possible, in the early days  of the republic.  Distances and difficult communication were huge obstacles.  But with the internet those problems can be solved and there is no practical reason why the general public should not have a direct voice in allocation of tax moneys and expenditures.