OpenGov - Open Government Brainstorm

Please see my taxation with representation item, yours if very similar but doesn't rely on individual checks to agencies. I know someone who does what you propose annually, determining tax amount due and then writing a check for that amount to a government agency whose function he agrees with, and then sending the receipt in with his tax form. Imagine if everyone started doing that!

People don't understand the government agencies and their roles, the benefits they deliver, or resources they squander well enough to make an informed choice.

If it was a non-binding vote, serving more as a poll, that'd be interesting. It would tell the government where people see their dollars as being best spent.

However, it would be an awful way for small groups of people to heavily skew the data. Special interest groups could rally their constituents to 'vote' in a way provided to them. These people wouldn't be weighing their options necessarily, just pushing a 'party line.' For instance, you might see data indicating that taxpayers want 30% of their dollars allocated to aid for a foreign government. I'm thinking mainly of elderly Jewish voters, who are a strong organized civic-minded and active voting block (much more so than other groups in their age demographic.) Something like this might quickly go the way of online petitions -- initially Congress took notice. When they realized how easy it was special interest groups to get a large amount of signatures, and how casual an exercise it was for the signers, they stopped paying attention.

It would be interesting. But considering the complexity of govt, I think we'd see elderly voters heavily over represented. More general questions about where taxpayers think their money should be spent (education, health care, welfare/social safety net programs, military, foreign assistance, etc)

What would be great, is it if taxpayers could dedicate 1% of their dollars to a something from an expanded list. That might not tie Congress and the OMB's hands too much, and it would be a constant reminder of where taxpayers see their dollars as best used.

I don't see donations directly to government organizations as a problem. I am concerned that forcing them to rely on public budgetting will cause problems, especially when an organization receives more than it needs and can't redistribute it. I also expect unpopular but necessary programs to be ignored, like the IRS.

People may be ignorant, but they are not stupid. They easily recognize what is good for them if given the truth. Unfortunately we are often ill informed. We don't get anything from the media but propaganda and so much spin it makes us dizzy. It would certainly force people to educate themselves and give much more thought to what their priorities are. I doubt that collectively we would do worse than our gov't representatives most of whom make it a policy to ignore what the people want and need. How do you think they got funding for the wars we are in? The bailouts? Did anybody want or approve of that? the answer is that the public overwhelmingly chose not to fund those things and the gubmint did it anyway.

If the public underfunded/overfunded something by accident, vote with your dollar would provide a way to review the money distribution by choosing to send a particular agency more or less money the next year. If the agency were doing a lousy job, they might expect less funding and vice versa. It would also encourage agencies to better budget their funds--save some for a rainy day, do outside fundraising if needed. In short they would have to become more responsible to their direct funders than they are now with our current hold-your-nose, write-the-tax-check-and-forget-it system.

It would need to be binding because our representatives in government have not been listening to us for a very long time. They listen to corporate interests who will fund their next campaign and ignore what is good for the public.

While I might be interested in funding some activities, I don't want to have to take the time and figure out what they are. Specifically, because I am not involved in their operation, I don't have the knowledge to determine whether they are doing a good job or not.

An alternative is to let a representative distribute my money in the same way:

http://opengov.ideascale.com/akira/dtd/3743-4049

No one seems to like it though.

So fund the ones you do know about and want to support. Others can fund the ones they know about. Public participation does require some investigation, discovery and effort. I could see agencies putting a lot more into educating the public about what they do if they want the public to fund them...

I don't want that "educating the public" for every government agency. That would be like spam.

A big part of this is that I want somebody else that I respect to make the effort because I'm too lazy and disinterested to do it myself.

And what about the programs no one wants to know about? People are still being neglected, abused and flat-out murdered in institutions. The details are not suitable for polite company.

Voting with your dollar could be optional. No need to force anybody to step to the plate who doesn't want to. On the other hand, if you don't want to step to the plate and do something about problems, you can't really complain if things don't go well.

Sounds like your begining to understand the basic problem with our central government. Which is this, they hate spending money on Americans. Whenever they do spend money on Americans it gains the colorful name of entitlement programs. Our government likes to spend money on wars (war profiteers), arms (military industrial complex), and aid to other countries (no accountabiltiy skims).

One dollar, one vote. A great way to raise revenue, and much more honest than how politicians raise funds for re-election.