Stipulative Taxes
Taxes are necessary to maintain civilizations, but in the current American system, when unsavory characters are pushing the buttons of power, as at the present time, this gathering of revenue changes and instead becomes simply a form of extortion, indistinguishable from mob figures barging into a New Jersey candy store and threatening to break the show windows, the proprietor's legs, his children's heads, or any other highly valued objects in the establishment, unless protection money is paid.
It's tragic that the general inertia of this huge nation is so great that trying out other systems of taxation on the national level is unthinkable.
The alternative method I have in mind for today is what I call Stipulative Taxation.
I make no claim to having invented this idea. Taxes have been a closed book to me from the First Day. But there have always been enough other wackoes around with unmoored brains that would have led them to reach the same conclusions.
By Stipulative Taxes I mean allowing the taxpayer to choose the exact areas of governance in which he wants his contributions to be used. So, if he felt that the nation is already sufficiently protected, and he doesn't want his money to go toward any more bombers, tanks, or all the atom bombs in the world, and if instead he wanted his seashores and his forests and his mountains and his deserts and his lakes to be preserved, with all the flora and fauna in them, then his money would go toward the efforts of the as yet nonexistent but absolutely necessary Department of the Environment, and with only a penny or two to the War Department, as the “defense” establishment used to be called in a more honest age..
It would be my hope that instead of for bullets and guns, the largest share of the monies collected would go to the education system, with no football teams to be humored. The most important thing a government can do is to make sure that the people it serves are well educated. With a highly educated populace, the solutions to all the other problems become apparent, or the problems are avoided in the first place.
This idea makes a lot of sense of me. Therefore it has to be completely unworkable.
For one thing it would never be approved by the U.S. Congress, because they would defnitely receive the shortest end of the stipulative stick.
It's tragic that the general inertia of this huge nation is so great that trying out other systems of taxation on the national level is unthinkable.
The alternative method I have in mind for today is what I call Stipulative Taxation.
I make no claim to having invented this idea. Taxes have been a closed book to me from the First Day. But there have always been enough other wackoes around with unmoored brains that would have led them to reach the same conclusions.
By Stipulative Taxes I mean allowing the taxpayer to choose the exact areas of governance in which he wants his contributions to be used. So, if he felt that the nation is already sufficiently protected, and he doesn't want his money to go toward any more bombers, tanks, or all the atom bombs in the world, and if instead he wanted his seashores and his forests and his mountains and his deserts and his lakes to be preserved, with all the flora and fauna in them, then his money would go toward the efforts of the as yet nonexistent but absolutely necessary Department of the Environment, and with only a penny or two to the War Department, as the “defense” establishment used to be called in a more honest age..
It would be my hope that instead of for bullets and guns, the largest share of the monies collected would go to the education system, with no football teams to be humored. The most important thing a government can do is to make sure that the people it serves are well educated. With a highly educated populace, the solutions to all the other problems become apparent, or the problems are avoided in the first place.
This idea makes a lot of sense of me. Therefore it has to be completely unworkable.
For one thing it would never be approved by the U.S. Congress, because they would defnitely receive the shortest end of the stipulative stick.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 5:14 PM
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