Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 15982

Okay, I know this is kinda trite. I am interested in the concept more than in the story itself, or it's ending

quote:

---

Originally published in ANALOG, September, 1983. Copyright © 1983 by Jack C. Haldeman II. reprinted by permission

WE, THE PEOPLE


The eggs were just the way he liked them. Mark ate slowly, enjoying the luxury of a leisurely breakfast. Outside his window the city was beginning to stir. Rain had been programmed for last night, and the streets were still damp. Across the room his cat was curled up in a patch of sunlight on the sofa, his tail swishing back and forth. The apartment was quiet, and he dragged breakfast out as long as he could. Finally he got up, set his plate on the floor for the cat to lick, and walked across the room to his desk.

"Good morning," he said automatically.

"GOOD MORNING, MARK. DID YOU SLEEP WELL?"

Mark looked at the words as they danced across the screen. "Kind of a bad night," he said. "My arthritis is acting up again."

"THAT'S TOO BAD, MARK. WAS IT YOUR KNEES?"


"No, just my hands this time." He looked at his swollen knuckles and ran them through his thinning gray hair. There were worse things.





"THAT'S THE THIRD TIME THIS MONTH. DO YOU WANT ME TO FLASH DR. CROMWELL?"

"No, that's okay. I'll be seeing him next week."

"DO YOU KNOW WHAT TODAY IS, MARK?"

"Saturday." It couldn't be his birthday. He'd told the desk to stop reminding him of those several years ago.

"TODAY IS APRIL 15TH."

"So what?"

"THIS IS TAX DAY. WE HAVE TO FILE BY MIDNIGHT."

"I forgot," he said.

"YOU HAVE BEEN PUTTING THIS OFF FOR MONTHS. SHALL WE START?"

Mark looked around the room. The cat was busily licking the plate. He felt old. You could block out birthdays, but not the IRS. "I guess we might as well get it over with," he said.

"THIS IS A PATRIOTIC OBLIGATION, MARK. YOU SHOULD FEEL PRIVILEGED TO DO YOUR PART."

"Can the pep talk. Let's go."

"DO YOU WANT THE SHORT FORM OR THE LONG FORM?"

"Don't be stupid."

"I AM REQUIRED BY LAW TO ASK YOU THAT."

"Does anybody use the short forms?"

"CERTAIN CONVICTED FELONS MUST USE THE SHORT FORM, HAVING SACRIFICED FREEDOM OF CHOICE."

"I'm not a convicted felon and I'm not an idiot. Let's have the long form."

"VERY WELL, MARK. BASED ON LAST YEAR'S INCOME OF $52,753.68, YOU HAVE AN ADJUSTED TAX OF $4,963.47. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THE CALCULATIONS?"

"Yes."

Mark scanned the figures as they rolled by. His income was higher than he'd thought, but not much more than comfortable, what with prices these days. Semi-retired, he did occasional projects for a variety of ecological organizations. He worked at home. He didn't get out much anymore.

"They look okay," he said.

"DO YOU WISH TO ITEMIZE THE ALLOCATION OF YOUR TAX MONEY?"

"Now you're being stupid again. Why else would I use the long form? Doesn't everybody?"

"PLEASE DON'T BE HARD ON ME, MARK, I'M ONLY DOING MY JOB. I HAVE TO ASK YOU THAT. IN RESPONSE TO YOUR QUESTION, ROUGHLY 99.987% OF THE ELIGIBLE TAXPAYERS USE THE LONG, ITEMIZED FORM."

Mark nodded. A person would have to be crazy to pass up the chance to say how his money would be spent.

"AID TO DEPENDENT CHILDREN."

Mark was old enough to remember the hungry times, the children who had grown up without hope. "One hundred dollars," he said.

"OFF-SHORE DRILLING SUBSIDY."

"Zero." They were almost all gone now, much to Mark's relief.

"RE-EMPLOYMENT TRAINING PROGRAM."

"Fifty."

"NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS."

"Fifty." He tried to imagine a life without music, without the sculptures and paintings all over town. He remembered how much Mary had liked the weekly concerts by the river and he recalled that day in the park with the kids and the dancers. "Make that seventy-five," he said.

"NEUTRON BOMB RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT."

Mark laughed. They tried to slip that old chestnut by every year. "Zero," he said. A bomb that killed people and left buildings intact was crazy, pure and simple. If they could refine it so it killed only generals, he might be interested.

Mark relaxed and let the categories roll by. He always put his taxes off until the last minute. A lot of people did.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Alice Thompson was an actress. At 43, she felt her career was just peaking. She had worked her way up through the ranks from community theater to stage productions to Hollywood, from ingenue roles to character parts. She had a comfortable income, good investment advice, a secure career. She portioned out her calculated tax with good humor: the Actors' Old Folks Home, a theater scholarship at her Alma Mater, the Playwrights' Association, two summer camps specializing in drama, the National Repertory Theater. She had little interest in the mundane affairs of state and saw no reason to spend any money on them. She had a little left over.



Erik Hesse was a janitor. He was sixty-three and had been a janitor for over forty years, from the day he got married. It hadn't been a bad life, especially after the union came in. These days it was hard to get someone to do nontechnical work so he made a pretty decent wage. When the time came, Erik went to a tax preparer to find out how much money he had to allocate. He put it in off-track betting, weather control (he hated shoveling snow off the sidewalk), the sports cable network, two research projects that concerned beer, and woman's gymnastics. Erik had a granddaughter who was into somersaults. Even so, he had a little left over when he finished and no place to put it.



Raymond Montonero was a Supreme Court Justice. There was less and less for him to do, however. People were working their problems out together in an aura of optimism that astounded him. It seemed that the more control people had over the government, the more control they used in their daily lives. He carefully allocated his tax bite to the Congressional Library, scientific research, and social programs. He worried over the remaining balance for a long time.



Tom Hanna was a red dirt farmer in the Oklahoma panhandle. His family had worked the same land for five generations and even though it wasn't a large spread, it was theirs. He was a proud man, and when he came in from the fields that Saturday he took his taxes seriously. He allocated the bulk of it to the Farm Bureau and the County Agriculture Commission. The rest he parceled out to the two state universities for operating expenses. He had a boy down at OU playing football and studying to be a veterinarian. Still, he had a little left over.



And so it went that day, all over the country. People put money into the programs that touched their lives and ignored the rest. They turned out to be excellent judges of the things they needed. The quality of life in the country had improved tremendously since the introduction of the Uniform Tax Act.

It had all started with a box on the tax form to support presidential campaigns. The next box to come along allocated money for the space program. Within two years the Mars project was completely funded. That unexpected success had lobbyists descending on Washington like a plague. Everyone wanted a special box on the tax form. Eventually they all got it.

Economists predicted chaos, but what they got was cooperation. People knew what they wanted, and for the first time in history they were able to get it. Unpopular projects came to a grinding halt as money for them was withheld. Politicians were forced to be more in tune with the desires of the public. Control of the purse-strings turned out to be the ultimate democratic tool, even more effective than the ballot.

Times changed. They changed for the better.

………………………………………………………….


Mark's cat had climbed onto his lap and fallen asleep. He relaxed in front of the desk, stroking the cat and responding to the programs almost automatically as they rolled across the screen in the quiet room. They were presented to him randomly. Each taxpayer got them in a different order, so that position on the list didn't favor any one program over another.

Mark had been doing tax forms for years, so it didn't take much thought. He remembered his mother's last years and increased his amount for Aid to the Elderly. He allocated money for the school lunch program and aid for the handicapped. He supported environmental programs and medical research. Although solar energy was the norm now, he put a few dollars into geothermal studies. He refused to put any money into bailing out two major oil companies. If they couldn't change with the times, that was their problem.

He studied last year's military expenditures carefully. What was the sense in having enough weapons to kill everyone on the face of the Earth six times over? He cut back even farther than he had last year. He made up the difference in veterans' benefits. Being one himself, he had a vested interest.

Vietnam had cut a bloody swath through his family before he was born, but he hadn't managed to escape the oil wars and that fiasco in South America. The jungle had cost him two brothers, a hip, and a knee. No amount of aid could bring back his brothers or his friends. It had been such a useless loss.

The words on the screen were blurry, and when he blinked his eyes he realized he'd been crying. He softly cursed. He slipped one hand out from beneath the cat and wiped his eyes. The words became clear once more.

"THAT'S THE END OF THE LISTING, MARK. YOU STILL HAVE A BALANCE OF $795.32. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO RUN THE SCREEN AGAIN?"

"No." The tears were coming again, damn it. He blinked his eyes.

"YOU MUST ALLOCATE ALL YOUR TAX MONEY."

He thought of his brothers, and the times they'd had growing up. The days seemed bathed in the warm glow of summer sunshine. They were precious days, gone forever. He knew that every person who had died in any war on any side for any cause had been grieved for, just as he was grieving now. It tore at his heart. All that pain, all that suffering.

"WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO RUN THE SCREEN AGAIN?"

"No," he said softly.

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD AN ADDITIONAL CATEGORY?"

"Yes." It was barely a whisper.

"READY. ENTER NEW CATEGORY."

"Peace," he said, and his single word floated in the quiet apartment.

"COULD YOU PLEASE BE MORE SPECIFIC, MARK?"

"I said peace, damn it," he shouted. "Everlasting, forever peace!"

The cat jumped from his lap at the outburst, and Mark pushed his chair back, leaving the desk. His eyes were still full of tears, and he felt like a fool.

If he was a fool, though, he wasn't alone. On that particular April 15 over two hundred million taxpayers added their voices to his.

By Christmas it was an accomplished fact.

---

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 3063

there are things people just dont think of that i imagine will need some funding.

like presidential libraries!

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

If you want people to have control over the expenditure of their own tax revenue, then don't take the money away from them in the first place.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

That isn't necessarily so. This fixes the amount and allows some choice as to what happens to it. Not taking it at all is a different thing; clearly, it gives more autonomy to the individual than the system discussed here, but what is being discussed her gives more autonomy than in the current system.

I suppose that it would at least be something of a solution to the problems of the two party state, where you may likely end up voting for someone you despise, distrust and disagree with.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Well, if that's the tack you wish to take, the obvious objection is that what the people collectively want is not necessarily what they collectively need.

One of the reasons that I'm a pseudo-Libertarian and not an anarchist is that I DO think that there's a need for a central authority to take care of certain extremely unpleasant and unpopular tasks. The building of bombs and the coining of currency and whatnot. I don't know how this system finances those activities. They're plenty necessary, but they're not cuddly enough.

A purely populist system would indeed lead to the withering and dying of unpopular programs. Specifically, it would kill the programs that were unpopular with the rich people who pay almost all the taxes. If I were, say, thimbles, this would scare the mortal piss out of me--if you want a system of BIG TIME corporate welfare and the abolition of most programs that benefit the truly disadvantaged, this is certainly the way to bring it about.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9453

except that there are collective uses of the money that benefit the nation as a whole that would be neglected.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

I don't think that you are making a particularly persuasive case that it would be disastrous for some 'poor people' programs, although clearly there would be some more risk to some programs (social programs, say) than in the current 'we take it, we'll decide how to spend it, while we disgracefully whore ourselves for the votes of morons' system; for example, differential tax rates would presumably still be set by democratic process (and, if they weren't, the power of the rich would be reduced because the poor would pay more with a flat tax). I don't think that the building of bombs and even the coining of currency would be at threat, particularly, although it might be that defence spending did fall (which can be justified on logical grounds, in any case).

The need/want issue arises at every level.

I'm not into this system, incidentally. I think that it would work at least as well as a libertarian-style system, but that (to me) is damning with very faint praise.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

quote:

---

Originally posted by CHiPsJr
...if you want a system of BIG TIME corporate welfare and the abolition of most programs that benefit the truly disadvantaged, this is certainly the way to bring it about.

---

Last edited by Smug Git on 01-29-2005 at 11:16 PM

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

Not sure how that's at all responsive, Smug. At BEST this system moves us from a system of "disgraceful whoring" (your term) in which one person has one vote to a system of more direct whoring in which one DOLLAR gets one vote.

It wouldn't be any better for the poor than Libertarianism, certainly. Where it would be WORSE than Libertarianism is that the rich could do whatever they wanted with their share of federal revenue, without any kind of ideologically-based restraint. The Libertarians would at least prevent Bill Gates from taking all $50 million of his own tax contributions and using it to fund a big 'ol program to promote Microsoft overseas--or alternatively a justice department lawsuit against his competitors.

It's a false comparison, though. My point was that those who see government as an appropriate caretaker for the poor would like this system less than the CURRENT system, not than Galt's Gulch.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35561

What I meant by 'disgraceful whoring' is the 'all things to all men, on a borrowed dime' politics.

As I say, I don't like this, I just don't understand why you don't prefer it to the current system given that many of the concerns that you raise would apply at least as much to the sort of system that you do favour, at least in terms of disintegrating programs.

I don't think that there's much doubt that Thimble wouldn't really endorse a system like this, after thought, but then, SS is closer to a libertarian than anything else, I would say.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

quote:

---

Originally posted by Smug Git
As I say, I don't like this, I just don't understand why you don't prefer it to the current system given that many of the concerns that you raise would apply at least as much to the sort of system that you do favour, at least in terms of disintegrating programs.

---

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Jan 2001
Location: Zion
Posts: 4444

Would something like this work on a partial scale? What if I could decide where 20% of my tax dollars were spent. Congress would have to reduce spending since they only get 80% of my money and I can decide which pieces of pork I wish to spend the remainder on.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: May 2002
Location:
Posts: 8650

No, not 20%, that would still leave the billionaires to decide way too much. It would have to be a flat number, for example each person would be allowed to decide how up to 5,000 of their tax contribution was spent, or something. There would obviously have to be guidlines, or I'd be donating lots of money to the 'getting travis laid charity.'

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Apr 2003
Location: . o O
Posts: 6368

I'd earmark three fifty for that.

__________________

[Ignore Sig]

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: MadCo
Posts: 1801

Yea, I'd love to say where a portion of my tax money got spent, and the gov gets to decide the rest.

Melesse

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Apr 2001
Location: 0.50
Posts: 9355

"They turned out to be excellent judges of the things they needed."
haha.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Apr 2002
Location: On a collision course with reality.
Posts: 334

People generally don't think of all the things that need doing- but I'd kill to be able to pick where 20% or so of it went. er... I won't be supporting law enforcement then!

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 15982

quote:

---

Originally posted by buddha's penis
"They turned out to be excellent judges of the things they needed."
haha.

---

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Jul 2001
Location: Norfolk, VA
Posts: 4678

Ok. Current system, we elect representativers, who divvy up the tax money after listening to all the people who want a chunk of it (ranging from the Department of Defense to the Peace Corps., from Tobacco Grower lobbies to the National Institute of Health). Then they consider their priorities (staying in office) and how to best go about this. It turns out that you need lots of money to run election campaigns, so the thing to do is to use your influence to secure funding so you can remain employed.

Now, if you took the decision-making authority regarding tax dollars away from the Congress and gave it to the people, then the same system would apply. You would have special-interest groups explaining to the American people directly (through TV ads, direct-mail campaigns, public meetings, etc.) why they should get everyone's $20 contribution. However, there are two major differences worth noting.

One, individual citizens would probably not be influenced by kickbacks and the like, so they would spend money on what they percieve it needs to really be spent on, rather than spending it on what will get them some kind of reward. Unlike the Congress, they're spending their own money, not someone else's. I say probably because a significant number of people honestly believe that if their credit card gives them back $0.01 on every $100 purchase, then they're coming out ahead.

Two, taxes and charities seem to be the only time people spend "nationally." Odds are the groups most able to influence their spending decisions would be local interest groups of some sort. E.g., I might spend some money on national parks or college aid money, but I am more likely to spend it on the park down the street where the neighborhood kids play football, or on tuition assistance so the bums in this town can get a votech degree and get off the street. I think if we could allocate our taxes personally, then it would encourage local involvement in a kind of positive feedback loop--the more involved you get, the more involved you want to get.

The major stumbling block is that most taxpayers just aren't informed. With all these lobbying groups coming at them, how are they going to know how to get the effect that they want out of their money?

One simple solution would be for people to start up firms which expressely allocated your funds in the manner you want--so if you're a religious nut who wants to allocate money to church charities, pro-life rallies, and what-have-you, then an organization could take your wishes and interact with all the lobbyists; likewise if you're a diehard secularist who wants to spend money on abortion counseling, school textbooks, etc. These firms would probably resemble mutual fund managers or something. In fact, your local (town) government could even serve in some of these capacities.

I've decided I really like the idea of this, Simon. Good one.

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

Registered: Dec 2002
Location:
Posts: 3063

quote:

---

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278

"Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Apportionment Bill, 1792. ME 3:211

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384

"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

---

Last edited by zim on 02-05-2005 at 08:40 PM

Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged