161–170 of 260 posts
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> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime. Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.
As they say, everywhere has its "south".
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Italy generally pays ~3-4 billion euros more into the EU budget than it receives from the EU. Ireland is much more of a mooch than Italy https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/net-contribution
Ireland is, as of 2016, a net contributor to the EU; this year the country is expecting to contribute 2.7bn€ Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-s-contri...
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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?
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!
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As they say, everywhere has its "south".
As someone from Louisiana, :C
I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.
For US income taxes the only amount of your taxes that you can direct is $3 for the presidential election fund. Why not expand this and let you pick from a dozen or so categories?
Small communities could, and do, organize festivals based on local culture: Trout fishing in the summer, Ice festivals in the winter, Duck races in the spring, etc. They get people interested in some aspect of the community, be it a festival, music, the climate, foods, textiles, history, etc. Either way, the community sends stuff out or brings people into itself for 'free' as the taxes have already been paid.
This incentivizes these small communities to plan for the festivals, to clean up the streets, to pay people to make it look nice, get a bunch of bunting ready for the 'homesick' tourists that they sent AirBNB vouchers out to. People come in, spend money at the diners and in the shops, at the mechanic's when a tire goes flat. There are knock-on effects that the community feels.
Or it incentivizes them to get better at food/textile/goods production. Maybe they make a mean steamed-ham. They get better at curing and steaming the hams, they find a niche in the market they didn't know they had, they hire more workers to fill the niche. City-slickers get some steamed-hams, realize that they don't have any rolls to eat them with, and go out and buy some. Again, knock-on effects.
For communities that are very small, they could run mini-lotteries, like one during a Wednesday night bowling league. You sign up, they draw a name out of a hat, you get 10% of everyone's tax money that entered (something less than the 30% that the community would have sent out).
Communities that don't participate still receive taxes as before. Some that choose to spend these taxes are taking a chance, true. But, I feel that this 'priming of the pump' is fantastic idea. It gets people moving about, making things, buying meals and plane tickets.
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That's just because their unwashed masses are only familiar with economic migrants from Southern Italy. If you paid any of them a holiday to Turin or Milan they wouldn't know what befell them, they couldn't even identify the country!
Thanks for the subtle racism towards southern italians...
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Tax redistribution inside nations or in nation unions (like the EU) is pretty much an investment. It generally generates more money than spent on it. E.g. Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, but guess what would happen if Germany decided to stop putting out those few billions a year. Yeah, not so good for the economy (not just of Germany, pretty much everyone). Turns out, those few billions spurred trad…
"one stick, alone, weak — many sticks, together, stronk". Just that the bundle is stronger than its constituents. Isn't there a word for a bundle of sticks bound together?
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> Just one nitpick: the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral college, while we're at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people living outside the sparsely populated rural states; It really depends on how you conceptualize it: there isn't much of an issue if you think of the Senate as a body that represents states as sovereign political entities not population. IIRC, Senators were origin…
> It really depends on how you conceptualize it: there isn't much of an issue if you think of the Senate as a body that represents states as sovereign political entities not population. That doesn't remove the problen, it just clarifies that it is a fundamental design problem and not a problem with an implementation details. > If the Senate is to be reorganized to be proportional to population That's a bad solution.…
It's only over-representation if representation must only be proportional to population.
> There's no real compromise or two-sided balance there.
There is a compromise and a two-sided balance: in the House, big states are "radically over-represented" because of their large populations; in the Senate, small-state individuals are "radically over-represented" because they're divided into more states per capita. Big states/urban areas have the power to block in the House, small states have the power to block in the Senate. The balance is that both sides have enough concentrated power that they're forced to compromise and cooperate or nothing can get done.
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For US income taxes the only amount of your taxes that you can direct is $3 for the presidential election fund. Why not expand this and let you pick from a dozen or so categories?
You an direct a massive amount of your taxes to any charity you want, so long as you are not hit by AMT: donations are tax-deductible.