Voting with Your Dollar?

Judging by the magnitude of the Tax Day and other Tea Parties we've seen recently, I think it's safe to say I'm not the only one who is frustrated with the incredible amount of money the federal government spends these days. It's not just the amount though, it's what the money is being spent on.

Granted, the purpose of transferring wealth from the private to public sectors is to make different use of it than otherwise. If they used it the same way we would, what would be the point? Still, it seems a little absurd to me that the people who are supposed to be representing us end up using our money on things we never would. If they're doing that, how can they really say they're representing their constituents?

As someone who has never owned her own home, I can only roll my eyes at the talk of subsidizing the failing subprime mortgages. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, with no washer or dryer, garage, or back yard. If I were given the choice of what to do with the portion of my money that would go to paying for other people's mortgages, I must admit I'd use it to save for my own home. Who wouldn't? But if I have to surrender it to the government, I'd feel a little less indignant if I could choose at least broad categories of what it would be spent on.

I think that is a worthwhile idea. What if you could sign in to some website and decide what percentage of your taxes go to which category of government programs, and even change the portions periodically. Kind of like deciding the allocations of your 401k or charity donations. Then, instead of griping about what those crazy people in DC are using our money for, we could feel at least a little better that we were allowed to choose in a broad sense what should be done with our own money – aside, of course, from saving it for ourselves.

Our Constitution gave the "power of the purse" to the House of Representatives because its authors believed that funding should be more directly controlled by the people. That was supposed to decrease the likelihood of the mismanagement of the public Treasury, since back then, Representatives were elected directly and the Senate was not.

So why not take that principle a step further? Why not give the taxpayers more of a voice in the spending of their money? Imagine the ramifications of that. Congress would never be able to carry out programs the people didn't support, unless they wanted to reach into their own pockets, which are admittedly rather deep for self-proclaimed "public servants." No one would have to protest irresponsible or wasteful spending because they themselves could pull the plug. I think it'd be great if the taxpayers were the ultimate authority of what the government could and could not do.

On the other hand, if Congress thought we should have a say in what happens with our money, the vast majority of it could stay in our own pockets. The entire premise of wealth redistribution, subsidies, and other socio-economic programs is that they know better what to do with all that money than the private citizens do.

Now that I think of it, this crazy idea of letting people decide what to do with their money sounds familiar. I've definitely heard of it before… Ah yes, it does sound a lot like the free market.

There are some things that it's better to pool our resources, like public defense and infrastructure. But here's the underlying point: how many current government functions can you think of that really require government bureaucrats to be the middle-men of the transaction? I can donate to the poor, to the arts, to scientific research on my own.

If we really believe in a democratic system of government, then we believe that we are rational human beings that can reasonably decide what happens with our government. If we also believe, on a personal level, that we know what best to do with our own money, why do we allow some remote group of strangers make those decisions for us, aside from the few things we can't very well do on our own?

It seems sort of hypocritical to me. Something along the lines of – well, I know what to do with my money, but the government needs to keep those other people in line. Or, the natural outcome of rational beings pursuing their own optimal outcomes is somehow irrational and must be fixed. Not enough would be spent on this or that – but by whose standards? Certainly not by the standards of those whose labor produced the money in the first place.

But if we believe that the normal, day-to-day decisions of the general public need to be overridden, then we don't really believe in democracy at all, do we?