I'd love to see a large scale survey where people allocate their taxes, and see what the allocation actually comes to!

The HN crowd might over-allocate $1000s per person to NSF, NIH and NASA and short Social Security while 100+M people contribute $0 to science, but depend on SS to survive. We might end up with the same budget but people feeling more in control.

We'd also see large scale advertising which is actually a good thing: ads are pretty cheap/efficient, make people feel better about their government and society, and employ an army of creative people. I imagine you wouldn't see branches of government running negative ads against each other - it would be more like the feel-good military recruiting ads today.

Sorry if this sounds utopian, I've had a rough week (in addition to everybody's rough week) and need something to feel good about.

That would end up in a popularity contest between agencies, which I doubt is desirable, especially considering some of those disliked agencies [1] are actually useful (like the FDA and the department of education).

And hang in there, the weekend is almost there. :-)

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonexaminer.com/whic...

I agree, I'm afraid we'd end up with the government spending equivalent of a poorly planned college potluck. Everyone brings chips and paper plates and there is no actual food.

There is a game if you want to try it for yourself. I agree I would be curious to aggregate https://www.federalbudgetchallenge.org/

awesome! I took it, did pretty well: $2.61T spending decreases $3.94T increased revenue $2.85T deficit (i.e. tackle via economic growth aka increased revenue due to increased GDP)

interesting to see how impactful a public health plan is ($158B) and raising the limit on social security income ($633B) and 2% VAT ($885B).

Yeah, adding a public option (a.k.a. Medicare for all) actually decreases the budget deficit. So why aren't we doing this?

If Social Security is an entitlement program like any other, why is there any max income? Why is it only on "earned" income?

Because that would essentially kill a lot of private healthcare jobs and industries. No administration* or congress wants to be the one to axe, say, Kaiser. It'd be a PR disaster.

* Theoretical Sanders administration aside.

Because powerful lobby groups dictate government policy.

Plus the Better-Dead-Than-Red strain of US Libertarianism. We may be poor, unhealthy, and beholden to wealthy political donors... but at least we ain't no Commie!