If you give folks the option to spend a part of their tax money as they see fit, then you're further legitimizing taxation even further. What's the difference between directing 30% of my stolen (taxed) income towards space funding and voluntarily donating a similar unstolen amount? One is coerced, the other isn't.
Allowing you to choose how your tax money is spent is like being mugged and having the mugger promise to spend a portion on whatever you like. That's nonsense.
Any attempt to look at taxation as anything other than government thievery is helping the government steal more of our money. Also remember any plans to allow us to direct our own tax monies would create more huge bureaucracies which would tend to eat up a good portion of that money anyway.
Taxation is theft. Nothing more.
---Damien Broderick <damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> At 01:21 PM 11/12/98 -0500, John Clark wrote:
>
> >Being forced to pay for something you detest will cause resentment
> >in some, I really don't see what's surprising about that.
>
> >The fact that part of my tax money goes to subsidies tobacco
farmers and
> >help them increase production makes me unhappy, the fact that
another part
> >of my tax money goes to subsides television advertisements to get
people to
> >stop using tobacco does not cheer me up.
>
> Yes, but my point is that this perception itself (of how your tax
share is
> being spent) is a somewhat arbitrary one. You can choose to look at
the
> matter differently. As other people have noted, it would be
refreshing to
> be allowed to nominate your own preferences concerning which pork gets
> barrelled. But since that option is not likely to be made available
why
> not recognise that some proportion of people favor state-funded
abortion
> (or space science) and notionally a part of their tax can be
ascribed to
> such use. A different proportion of the voters wants to fund
orphanages
> for hapless bastards, and an equivalent part of their tax goes there.
> Obvious such segmentation is rough & ready, but I suspect it might
reflect
> the underlying reality (except for space travel and astronomy, where
> probably *most* people bitterly resent having to pay for any part of
that
> goddamned pointy headed science bullshit boondoggle).
>
> Damien Broderick
>
==
terry@donaghe.com