From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 04:43:20 GMT

[Via misc.activism.progressive from PeaceNet's ELECTIONS.USA]
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Topic 279       Economic Democracy 
dcaulkins@igc.org
                elections.usa    4:34 pm  Oct  7, 1992 
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Economic Democracy * 

"He who pays the piper calls the tune." - proverb 

  D. Caulkins                                       10/7/92 

The concept is simple and compelling - US taxpayers should be 
given the right to 'vote' on how their tax dollars are spent. 

Economic democracy might work like this.  With the forms mailed 
to each tax payer would be included a list of major US Government 
budget line items and the amounts spent on them in the previous 
year.  The tax payer would indicate on his or her yearly tax 
return the percentage of tax dollars to be spent on each budget 
line item.  The IRS computers would calculate cumulative 
percentages across all tax returns to produce percentages of 
total tax revenues that could be spent on each budget item.  
Congress and the President would be required to follow these 
tax-payer-selected spending percentages.  

To prevent overly large financial shock to existing government 
programs, it would probably be wise to put a limit to the yearly 
amount by which any budget item could change.  Plus or minus 5 to 
10 % per year seem like a good limits. 

As indicated in Table 1 below items 1, 3, 5, and 8 cannot be 
arbitrarily reduced and may require additional limitations. 

It might be a good idea to restrict economic democracy to items 1 
- 12 in Table 1 during the first few years of the program.  Items 
13 - 21 add up to only 5 % of of the total budget; the amounts 
allocated to each could be left alone until economic democracy 
has proven its effectiveness.   

                          Table 1 
               Major Items in the 1990 Budget 

  From "US Statistical Abstracts"; primary source is the "Budget 
  of the United States Government," produced by the Office of 
  Management and Budget.                            

+-+-----------------------------+----------+-------+--------+---+ 
|i|                             |          |       |        |   | 
|t|                             |          |       | cumul  |   | 
|e|    Budget Item              |     $    |       | -ative |   | 
|m|                             |(billions)|   %   |  %     |   
|  
+-+-----------------------------+----------+-------+--------+---+ 
 1 Income Security **              491.70     37.95    37.95    
 2 Defense                         296.30     22.87    60.82  60 
 3 Interest on debt **             175.60     13.55    74.37    
 4 Health                           57.80      4.46    78.84  80 
 5 Fed Retirement+Disability Ins ** 52.20      4.03    82.87 
 6 Education, training, employment  37.70      2.91    85.77    
 7 Transportation                   29.30      2.26    88.04    
 8 Veterans Benefits **             28.90      2.23    90.27  90 
 9 Commerce and housing credit      22.70      1.75    92.02    
10 Natural resources + environment  17.50      1.35    93.37    
11 International                    14.60      1.13    94.50 
12 Agriculture                      14.60      1.13    95.62  95 
   
=============================================================== 
13 Science, Space, + Technology     14.10      1.09    96.71    
14 General Government               10.60      0.82    97.53    
15 Admininstration of justice       10.50      0.81    98.34  98 
16 Community, regional development   8.80      0.68    99.02  99 
17 Retirement+Disability Ins         5.20      0.40    99.42    
18 Energy                            3.20      0.25    99.67    
19 General purpose assistance        2.20      0.17    99.84    
20 Consumer health + Safety          1.50      0.12    99.95    
21 Health education + training       0.60      0.05   100.00   
     Total                       1,295.60    100.00 

** - "entitlement" or other items that cannot be arbitrarily 
reduced. 

An Improvement 

This discussion has been based on published US Government budget 
line items; it would probably be a good idea to re-categorize the 
budget into fewer but more distinct and easily understood 
sections.  A possible list might be: 

Agriculture Subsidies 
Consumer Protection 
Debt interest 
Defense 
Education 
Energy 
Federal and Veteran's Benefits 
Foreign Aid 
Government Operating Expenses 
Health 
Housing 
Income Security and Retirement 
Natural Resources + Environment 
Science 

* - Economic democracy is probably not a new idea; Most recently 
it was proposed to me by Elisabeth Caulkins; I first heard of it 
from Barbara Avedon of Another Mother for Peace.