5 ms·

The government needs better PR frankly, instead of allowing itself to be a punching bag all day. Nobody can even imagine how many things the government and your

by taurath 10y ago

The government needs better PR frankly, instead of allowing itself to be a punching bag all day. Nobody can even imagine how many things the government and your tax dollars provide.

coderjames 10y ago
I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.
- patrickaljord 10y ago
  Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Interest on the national debt is a small portion of the US budget: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... Even if you just look at discretionary spending, debt payments are not a large portion of spending. New borrowing is also larger than the interest payments.
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      There is something off with the charts on the site you refer to (they don't provide the actual numbers in the charts). Simple calculation: With $20T of debt, at 3% interest rate (30Y bond), the interest on the debt is adding 600 billion dollars to the deficit per year (and it compounds). 600 billion with respect to the 3.8 billion federal budget is almost 16%. And the interest rate is so low only because debt rates have been artificially suppressed by central banks using financial tricks such QE, the Fed buying its own's governments' debt, etc. With interest rates bound to rise sooner or later, we are sitting on a financial time bomb.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        The US pays (on average) less than 3%. The debt is also just a bit less than $19 trillion. So we save $30 billion by using the slightly smaller debt and $120 billion by using the interest rate of 2.4%. $450 billion is still a huge budget item and it is a problem that interest rates will rise.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher taxes across most or all earners. But you don't pay for the national debt, mostly. Recent payments on the national debt are around $420 billion - about 11% of the federal budget. God knows that's not small, but it's far from 'mostly', and 2/3 of the debt is even held inside the US.
- lostboys67 10y ago
  They do this in the UK
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    Though there is some controversy over how it is presented: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 The story contains an image of what they provide, as well as some suggestions for making it better.
- theOnliest 10y ago
  My local taxes (county) do this. Whenever you pay property (house, car) taxes, it tells you $x goes to the county schools, $y to roads, and so on. (Usually including something like $0.67 to the county library!) It's really nice...sure, paying tax on my car every year isn't great, but I'm happy to give $150 (or whatever it is) to the public schools.
bbctol 10y ago
There's a lot of talk with respect to the US Democrat/Republican split on how Democrats are terrible at highlighting when government helps people (because it seems to cheapen the process or some silly issue.) http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-take-credit/ http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-tak...
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I saw an interesting comment recently, from a Republican who wished for Pelosi or some other important Democrat to just say thank you. Thank you for the money, thank you for working to help these people, fund these programs, keep everything running smoothly. It's an interesting thought. There are plenty of reasons it's not going to happen in a vacuum - if Pelosi did it tomorrow she'd be mauled by both parties. But as part of something larger? It could be incredible. William Proxmire made his career with the Golden Fleece Award, attacking stupid and wasteful spending (sometimes quite inaccurately). I don't know why there's so little effort on the left to clearly, emotionally show the good that gets done. Imagine if every budget fight involved someone coming forward and saying "I grew up being fed on WIC. I'm a civil engineer now, and WIC helped make that possible. Out of every tax dollar you paid, I got .000002 cents. Do you really want to take that away?" (I hope I got that math right.)
  - compiler-guy 10y ago
    Growing up, I got free lunches in school, and in college I got the maximum Pell Grant every semester for four years straight. I thank my lucky stars for those things and am very glad the government did it. Of course, given the amount I pay in taxes, the government made an absolutely terrific investment. I have returned that value to it many, many times over. All else being equal, of course I would prefer to pay lower taxes. That's what efficiency means, and the government is not very efficient. But "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society." (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.), and I kinda like civilized society. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/275/87/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/275/87/case.html
PretzelFisch 10y ago
But then you have people who would complain because they don't want to pay for x at all. Still many people would not read it and remain ignorant.
jandrese 10y ago
Unfortunately, that PR has another name: Propaganda. Progressives in particular are sensitive to the idea of the government messaging them and tend to worry about the perception. Meanwhile, private interests have no compunction against advertising heavily and constantly to get their message across. It's a huge advantage for industrial incumbents over the government.

by taurath 10y ago

The government needs better PR frankly, instead of allowing itself to be a punching bag all day. Nobody can even imagine how many things the government and your tax dollars provide.

coderjames 10y ago

I was thinking about this recently when I filed my taxes. Maybe if they provided some kind of itemized receipt? "You paid $x in taxes. This was distributed as $y to infrastructure, $z to education, $w to defense" etc.

patrickaljord 10y ago
Your tax dollar don't pay for $y, $z or $w. You pay for the national debt mostly at this point. The government overspends and gets its money either from debt or from over printing. Even if top 10 of fortune 500 paid 100% taxes, it would still not cover spending. Just saying.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Interest on the national debt is a small portion of the US budget: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud... Even if you just look at discretionary spending, debt payments are not a large portion of spending. New borrowing is also larger than the interest payments.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    There is something off with the charts on the site you refer to (they don't provide the actual numbers in the charts). Simple calculation: With $20T of debt, at 3% interest rate (30Y bond), the interest on the debt is adding 600 billion dollars to the deficit per year (and it compounds). 600 billion with respect to the 3.8 billion federal budget is almost 16%. And the interest rate is so low only because debt rates have been artificially suppressed by central banks using financial tricks such QE, the Fed buying its own's governments' debt, etc. With interest rates bound to rise sooner or later, we are sitting on a financial time bomb.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      The US pays (on average) less than 3%. The debt is also just a bit less than $19 trillion. So we save $30 billion by using the slightly smaller debt and $120 billion by using the interest rate of 2.4%. $450 billion is still a huge budget item and it is a problem that interest rates will rise.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher taxes across most or all earners. But you don't pay for the national debt, mostly. Recent payments on the national debt are around $420 billion - about 11% of the federal budget. God knows that's not small, but it's far from 'mostly', and 2/3 of the debt is even held inside the US.
lostboys67 10y ago
They do this in the UK
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Though there is some controversy over how it is presented: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29898083 The story contains an image of what they provide, as well as some suggestions for making it better.
theOnliest 10y ago
My local taxes (county) do this. Whenever you pay property (house, car) taxes, it tells you $x goes to the county schools, $y to roads, and so on. (Usually including something like $0.67 to the county library!) It's really nice...sure, paying tax on my car every year isn't great, but I'm happy to give $150 (or whatever it is) to the public schools.

bbctol 10y ago

There's a lot of talk with respect to the US Democrat/Republican split on how Democrats are terrible at highlighting when government helps people (because it seems to cheapen the process or some silly issue.) http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-take-credit/ http://democracyjournal.org/arguments/keep-it-simple-and-tak...

Bartweiss 10y ago
I saw an interesting comment recently, from a Republican who wished for Pelosi or some other important Democrat to just say thank you. Thank you for the money, thank you for working to help these people, fund these programs, keep everything running smoothly. It's an interesting thought. There are plenty of reasons it's not going to happen in a vacuum - if Pelosi did it tomorrow she'd be mauled by both parties. But as part of something larger? It could be incredible. William Proxmire made his career with the Golden Fleece Award, attacking stupid and wasteful spending (sometimes quite inaccurately). I don't know why there's so little effort on the left to clearly, emotionally show the good that gets done. Imagine if every budget fight involved someone coming forward and saying "I grew up being fed on WIC. I'm a civil engineer now, and WIC helped make that possible. Out of every tax dollar you paid, I got .000002 cents. Do you really want to take that away?" (I hope I got that math right.)
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  Growing up, I got free lunches in school, and in college I got the maximum Pell Grant every semester for four years straight. I thank my lucky stars for those things and am very glad the government did it. Of course, given the amount I pay in taxes, the government made an absolutely terrific investment. I have returned that value to it many, many times over. All else being equal, of course I would prefer to pay lower taxes. That's what efficiency means, and the government is not very efficient. But "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society." (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.), and I kinda like civilized society. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/275/87/case.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/275/87/case.html

PretzelFisch 10y ago

But then you have people who would complain because they don't want to pay for x at all. Still many people would not read it and remain ignorant.

jandrese 10y ago

Unfortunately, that PR has another name: Propaganda. Progressives in particular are sensitive to the idea of the government messaging them and tend to worry about the perception. Meanwhile, private interests have no compunction against advertising heavily and constantly to get their message across. It's a huge advantage for industrial incumbents over the government.