If you could choose where your tax dollars went, where would you want the money to go?

Question

defense, foreign countries, education, poverty, etc?

Just a hypothetical question.

Answer 1

Back into my bank account.

Answer 2

Health Care. To be the healthiest people on earth. Having a healthy population is the first requirement of national security.

Research and development. To make us the premier country in solving the problems of global warming and feeding and controlling the Earth's population.

We must maintain our infrastructure. Roads, Bridges, Rail systems, waterways should be the safest, most efficient and most up to date in the world.

Our international image. We should invest in a corp of dedicated diplomats and foreign relations experts to maximize our good will in the world.

National Defense. We should have a strong commitment to defending out borders, and retaliation against aggressors. We should not try to police the world.

Answer 3

The previous answer sounds pretty good... but the money the U.S. spends on the Department of Defense is exceedingly high. I agree we need to have a strong military, but all the billions of dollars we have spent on this War in Iraq and War on Terror is not helping to alleviate the needs of poor school systems in this country that do not have basic supplies for their children and are forced to attend classes in dilapidated buildings. Spend less on the military and help pump some of that money back into our education system...

Answer 4

As we are a representative democracy, the representatives have to decide the ratios. The "my bank account" answer was great, but defending our country enables us to be able to provide education, etc.
You can't look at a city, state, or national budget in an egocentric manner. What is important to one person has to account for what is important to another person. The question is more rhetorical then hypothetical.

Answer 5

What good does it make to have the biggest army in the world if that army is going to be commanded by an ignorant commander in chief, elected by ignorant people who prefer not having an education or health care to feel safe? Freedom is the fight for the absence of necessity but our fight for freedom is creating more necessity in this country than ever before.

Answer 6

Education. Judging from some of the grammar I've seen on this site, the educational system must be going to hell in a handbasket.

Answer 7

Border inforcement first! Raul sounds like an illegal!

Answer 8

Better pay and benefits for our ENLISTED TROOPS !!!

Answer 9

First the claim by our gov that taxes are needed is smoke and mirrors BS! It's one more big lie the flim flam men politicians hoodwinked the population with.
We have a state that PAYS their residents and doesn't tax them, Alaska.

From Alaska's state site:

The Alaska state constitution claims common heritage rights of ownership of oil and other minerals for the people of the state as a whole. Citizen dividend checks are distributed every year in Alaska out of the interest payments to an oil royalties deposit account called the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) created in 1976 after oil was discovered on the North Slope. The APF is a public trust fund - a diversified stock, bond and real estate portfolio - into which are deposited the oil royalties received from the corporations which extract the oil from the lands of Alaska. The first citizen dividend check from the interest of the APF was issued in 1982 and was for $1000 per every person for everyone in Alaska who had resided in the state for at least one year. Annual citizen dividends have been issued every year since then, for a total of more than $23,000 per person.

In 2003, each of the nearly 600,000 Alaska US citizens (residents of Alaska for at least one year) received a check for $1,107 from the APF. The total amount dispersed was $663.2 million. The $25 billion investment fund's core experienced stock market losses which led to the dividend's decline this past year compared to the several previous years. The amount was $433 less, a 28 percent drop from the 2002 pay out of $1,540, and a 44 percent decrease from the all-time high of $1,964 in year 2000. The amount changes based on a five-year average of APF investment income derived from the bonds, stock dividends, real estate and other investments.

Alaska relies on oil for about 80 percent of its revenue and has no sales or income tax. Alaska state government is mandated to invest 25% of its oil revenue into the APF while the other 75% of oil royalty revenue is dispersed to other government funds to finance education, infrastructure and social services. If 100% of Alaska's oil royalties had been deposited into the APF, it is conceivable that the CD this year could have been about $4,400 or $17,600 for a family of four. But then there would have been no funds for roads, education and other public services and no funds available to run the state legislature - a libertarian dream fulfillment or a social and economic disaster, which one we will never know. If state services were to have been maintained while 100% of oil royalties were deposited in the APF, there would of course have been the need for income, sales and other taxes on wages and production.

Our flim flam men politicians all know what Alaska does. If they had just one once of integrity they would make Earth Rights for whole nation. With national Earth Rights the feds could pay 50 times what Alaska pays their residents. That's $50,000 p/yr for each household. Have you ever heard even one say anything about doing this? Hell no!

The Flim Flam Men:


They make speeches about they must have taxes, and every politician knows what is being done in Alaska. Alaska Pays all their residents with earth rights and doesn’t tax their residents. This makes the politicians liars!

They make speeches to get elected and make promises about what they will do for us. They say nothing about getting every dime of lobby money to do what big biz wants that’s opposite what they promised you they would do. That makes them cheats!

They stole your grandmother’s retirement money from SS. Now you face getting nothing for your SS payments. That makes them thieves!

They tax us, but they know the foreign companies pay no taxes on the goods they sell here. The goods are sold then bought on paper in a foreign port to skate the tax laws. Thus eliminating their profit on paper to cheat the US out of the taxes they owe. This makes them backstabbers!

They take lobby money to put earmarks and pork in every law that passes their desk. Then they do photo ops, and news clips to promote themselves as doing something good for us and America. So they corkscrew us!

They make back room deals and give our tax money to foreigners who build factories with our money. Then they write laws that send our jobs overseas. This makes them dirty dealers!

So lets total all this up. They lie, cheat, steal, backstab, corkscrew, and dirty deal. HELL their Flim Flam Men! Just like in the George C. Scott movie “ The Flim Flam Man”!
They are called the “ Honorable” Senator or Representative. Hell Flim Flam Men have NO honor what so ever! They’re crooks, criminals for God’s sake!

The BBC has film of ALL of them going in and out of Abramoff’s restaurant. That’s THE place in DC to get loaded with lobby money. The BBC has been running this story, and trying to get the US media to run it too. The US media refuses to run the story.

It’s time to take America back! Get registered! VOTE! Vote for anyone that’s not a Democrat or a Republican. They have ALL the power and ALL the control. They must bear ALL the responsibility for their gross mismanagement and abysmally poor judgment! It’s time to put THEM ALL in the unemployment line!

If I could choose what to do with the money! I'd make a whole new style of government. It would work like a business that the people own, and I would make it do this:

First someone like me would have to the President. I say that because I'm the kind of man that can't be knuckled under, I don't take you can't do that and just quit, and no matter how hard the job is I never stop short.

I’m a working class man, I came up doing body work, so I know how to fix the tangled mess others have made.

As President, this being THE most powerful position in the world, I would go completely around the Senate and the House. I would use the Executive Order and write the checks to get what needs to be done, done ASAP! The treasury is in the executive branch and Lincoln wrote checks to get things, so I would do the same.

By Executive Order, I would start with fixing the governments money problems and getting the citizens tax problems solved. Then I would stop the foreign companies that cheat the US out their share of taxes, and make a loophole free way to collect every penny they owe.

Next would come the illegals, I'd get them all registered, employed, and put them on the tax roles not us. We need the illegals paying taxes because there's just not enough Gen Xer's to pay the SS for the Boomers and Gen Xer's.

I'd make millions of high wage jobs with renewable power plant construction jobs and renewable power would be a priority. I'd build so much clean power we would have power in overabundance, and could supply the whole world with clean US made power. 1/3 of the money from the foreign power bills would be put into a fund and every head of household would get a paycheck and NO tax bill!

To continue doing this would make a book so I'm going to outline what’s to be quickly:

1st90 days by ExOrder
Establish Earth Rights for all of America like in Alaska
End income taxes;fund the Gov the right way, not on our backs
End tax paper work for citizens, not business
Balance the budget, officials are not paid till it’s done
Regular people for elected officials, no lawyers or rich
End lobbyists, take the money out of politics
Make graft illegal, mandatory jail time
Close the DOE, save the money
Take the Gov out of the schools, PTA run save money
Set Iraq’s oil to pay for the war, make an exit plan with the military
Prisoners work for jail costs, not us, save the money
Make foreign tax cheats pay, tariff goods @retail every container
Register illegals, get them on the tax roles not us
Private SS accounts, makes us millionaires, no gov access to money
After90 days by ExOrder
Build renewable power, make millions of high wage jobs
Build a fund from foreign power bills like Alaska uses to PAY us
End Nuclear power
Build electric powered roads, make millions more jobs
Thousands of jobs building electric cars&trucks
End dependence on foreign oil
Clean the polluted water with clean electric power
Return America to 50% of world’s economy

Alaska uses Earth Rights to pay about $1000 p/yr and not tax their residents. With all 50 states my fed gov could pay $50,000 p/yr, NO TAXES, and fund the gov!

The foreign tax money, the illegals taxes, and earthrights money pays all the gov expenses, funds the military better than now, and pays down the debt with NO deficit.

The Renewable power fund would pay what I call a National Income Program, and when the fund matures in about 30 years, would pay about another $50,000 p/yr.

So $50,000 p/yr from the Earth Rights and NO taxes. Millions of high wage power plant construction jobs, we would need to build 5000 power plants just to start, and build for many years to come.

Then millions more jobs to build new electric powered roads to use the clean power. Thousands of jobs to build electric cars and trucks.

Then comes the other $50,000 p/yr from the National Income Program all with no taxes. And oil dependence ends!

Then the private SS account would have about a $1,000,000 in it when you retire. The rich make fortunes by building money in funds just this same way, so what works for the rich will for the nation.

This builds America to be 300,000,000 millionaires. The money would be pasted to your Aires and NO TAXES. Each generation would be richer than the last. Soon newborns would be born millionaires, and the system would continue to multiply their wealth for each next generation.

America would be so wealthy that soon we would be the envy of the world, and people from around the world would lick our boots for us to help them get where we would be. America rules the world with wealth, not war.

With stable power comes jobs, with jobs comes prosperity. Prosperity makes life comfortable, with comfort comes contentment. Contentment would bring peace, and war would be a thing of the past. If someone for some strange reason wanted start a war we could just stop beaming their power.

I take it you know electric power can be beamed on a microwave inside a laser beam to a satellite and put anywhere it's needed on the earth! So cut the beam and no power. It's hard to fight a war with no lights or power. America controls the power!

The renewable power is fuel-less so it's cheap clean power! It’s without the inflation of fuel costs, so the price would remain stable.

Would you vote for me to be the President?