Since we're on HN, I'll give you an example of a pretty successful startup built on those "magic thresholds": Kickstarter. Yes, of course having more money sca

Since we're on HN, I'll give you an example of a pretty successful startup built on those "magic thresholds": Kickstarter. Yes, of course having more money scales the ROI superlinearly. Lots of projects can't be done at all without a minimum investment. Others just have economies of scale (e.g. dilution of fixed overhead). And considering that the government usually does stuff on very large scales, it's not strange that a single taxpayer's contribution is too small to be meaningful. Just creating a government program probably takes more than what I pay yearly.