Yep, there are problems with direct democracy. There are also problems with representative democracy.
Our federal representatives have given us a “budget” where we collect $3.5 billion but spend $4.5 billion in “good” economic times (2019). IMO, that is such a dramatic failure of representative democracy that we need to do something very different.
And, I believe the public is woefully under-informed about how much they pay in taxes and where that money goes. Voting directly is a great form of education.
Yes, I would give the congress the power to declare a national emergency due to a “security” or “economic hardship” situation and modify spending or taxes. But, I’d look for super-majorities for such a declaration, and make it effective for no more than 12 months, for example.
I just set at Thanksgiving hearing two of my wife’s uncles talk about how dumb Democrats are and how great Trump was. Then I got an earful about how expensive health insurance is and how they wish they didn’t have to pay so much to go to the Dr. There is so much disconnect between what is good for someone and what they vote for that I think the average voter has no clue what they’re voting for. They’re just expressing membership into a social group for the most part.
Is there an objective measure of “worse” in a democracy?
What I mean by “education” is that today, hardly any American can say “I pay $__ in taxes to support the US military”, or to say “I pay __% of my income to support the US military”.
In my system, people would vote on the question
“The tax rate for military support is currently __% of income*. This rate should be __ increased; __ decreased; __ kept the same”.
It is hard to answer that without noticing the number that fills that first blank.
Yes, and after something like 9/11 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, everyone is going to vote “increase” and in a bad recession everyone is going to vote “decrease” regardless of the underlying merit of those outcomes.
Like I said, I expect voters to make even worse decisions than the already not great decisions made by Congress.
As I’ve already said, I would give congress the authority to override the referendum in cases like bad recessions.
Congress spent more money after 9/11 and the Ukraine invasion, I’m not sure why you think that’s a good idea but it’s a bad idea for the voters to decide to do the same thing. The difference is the voters will back up the extra spending with extra taxes. And, again, Congress could declare a “national security emergency” if they want to override the voters.
even worse decisions
Again, I don’t know how you determine “worse”.
The primary reason I prefer the referendum approach is that this process links taxes to spending. Our representatives don’t do that. I think they should.
Oh, maybe on Ukraine they would. I think there’s times they wouldn’t.
Obviously there’s no single objective definition for “worse”, but I think we’d have a lot more flip-flopping than we do currently.
Half the country loves Obamacare; half the country hates it. But whether you love it or hate it, do you really want to be going back & forth, on-again, off-again, every time the needle on 50.0001% of the population switches sides or would you rather we pick a way of paying for healthcare, implement it, and work to improve its flaws?
The instability in what you propose would be staggering.
Firefighter pay after 9/11 would have been 6 figures. After the ‘08 housing crash it would have been minimum wage. Somewhere in between is a reasonable figure.
I guess I’m not explaining the idea well. If Obamacare were a stand-alone item, the only way it could get to no funding is if 100% of the voters selected “decrease funding” year after year. There is no flip-flopping there. “Decrease” is not the same as “eliminate”.
There would be a formula, say: Change = current rate x .5 x (I-D)/T.
Suppose the current funding for some program is an 8% tax rate.
If 100% of voters said “decrease”, the change is -4% and the rate would go to 4%.
If 100% said “increase”, the change is +4% and the rate would go to 12%.
35% “increase”, 45% “decrease” and 20% “no change” results in 7.6%
0% “increase”, 10% “decrease” and 90% “no change” also gives 7.6%
30% “increase”, 20% “decrease” and 50% “no change” gives 8.4%
I expect that in practice, the Increase and Decrease votes would be very close to one another as the voting would tend toward some stable number. But, if we vote every year, there could be a clear trend over time.
This seems not accurate. If you don’t use the word Obamacare I think it’s a pretty solid majority in favor, especially if you remind them of the alternative.
Ok, pick a different issue then: one that’s pretty evenly divided.
I certainly didn’t understand Indy’s way of calculating taxing & spending when I made that post though, so it’s perhaps irrelevant in terms of evaluating Indy’s hypothetical.
The law that establishes this referendum system has the formula I wrote out.
Change = current rate x .5 x (I-D)/T = 8% x .5 x (0-100)/100 = -4%.
The question on the ballot does not allow people to specify how much their taxes should go up, just “increase”. The amount of the increase/decrease depends on the votes. How are the other 95% of the voters voting? If they all say “no change”, then the increase this year is 0.2% so the new tax rate is 8.2%.
Next year there will be another referendum. Maybe some of the 95% say that 8.2% is too high. Maybe the votes are 5, 5, and 90. In that case, the rate stays at 8.2%. Maybe next year’s vote is 5, 10, and 85. In that case the rate will decrease to 7.995%.
Those are just examples to help with the math, not very realistic IMO.
What if there is no current tax to support the item?
How fine are we cutting this? “Defense” or are we looking at every ship and airplane and nuke purchased? What if I think we should be spending more on ships and less on nukes? Or vice versa? Or I think the Generals & Admirals make too much but the enlisted folks don’t make enough?
I’m having a hard time envisioning how this could possibly work and why it requires me to vote rather than my Congress Critters or why that would be a good idea.
I imagine maybe 6 classes of spending initially. One is “defense”. All the details are determined by congress and the military. The voters provide a total budget.
Politicians argue about “smaller” vs. “larger” government. Why should they argue about that? Ordinary people set spending priorities in their own lives, they can determine how much gov’t, in total, they are willing to buy. Let the reps make the more detailed decisions.
Note that my first post on this topic was a reply to EG who said it’s impossible to know exactly how much we should spend on one person with hemophilia. We’re a big country, “more” is always an option. The best chance of controlling gov’t spending on healthcare is to set one healthcare budget, then try to spend efficiently within it. That’s part of the rationale for my proposal.
This proposal gives you more control of gov’t spending than you have today, but not enough to weigh in on nukes vs. ships.
The people who run the military will have to make the case to the public that they are spending “wisely”. If a large portion of all the voters get upset because they all think we’re spending too much on nukes and starving ships, they might react by just cutting the global budget.
I would like to believe that, over time, people would get comfortable enough with this process that they would push for more categories. But, I can’t imagine more than a dozen. I’m sure that some people would want to vote on “foreign aid” as a category. Maybe with this process some of them would connect with the answer that the current foreign aid budget can be funded by a tax rate of 0.3%, that’s not big enough for it’s own category.
That would be a new program that is so big at the beginning it doesn’t fit within any other category. I see that as a once in 50 years event. Congress could pass a law that establishes the program, sets a tax rate, and then includes it in the referendum after it has run couple years. Or, they could put the program itself to a referendum “Do you want this new program, recognizing that it will cost __% of taxable income?” In this case, it could be a close either/or vote. Such big programs are often close either/or votes in Congress, so not a lot different there.
Sure, I just want to daydream of cool fixes. IMO, when you spend infinity money on a problem, you are bound to get some good results. And it’s practically impossible to ask if you are getting good bang-for-buck overall. But, it’s at least fun to ask if any one part could be better.
Since you bring up the vaccines, I would point out we did handle those differently:
-with large prepurchases from the federal government.
-heavily funding simultaneous trials so that they could be performed simultaneously (and reducing risk for private entities).
Maybe the federal government could do more to be involved in that sense? With some kind risk-sharing and profit-sharing arrangement?
The vaccines also left us with some question of how the IP should have been handled in 2021 and 2022-- ie. could we have vaccinated the world sooner?
Yesterday, a prescription commercial came on during football at one point, and Jaspess II asked why there even are commercials for prescription drugs if doctors are going to prescribe or not based on what’s actually needed or not (at least in theory). I didn’t have a reply, because she’s not wrong to ask. Why are prescription drugs allowed to have commercials?
so we can…“talk you (y)our doctor about Scam-bilance. Don’t take Scam-bilance it you are or are planning on becoming pregnant. Don’t take if you are allergic to Scam-bilance or any of its ingredients. Some side effects, like a tearing of the 'taint are possible with Scam-bilance.”