No, this wouldn’t be politically viable. Taxes are unpopular, the vast majority of people (including both voters and politicians) have no idea what EA is, and many people don’t like EA and would be vocally opposed to something like this.
However, there may be vaguely similar ideas that might work to a limited degree. I remember hearing about an idea where employers could nudge their employees to donate 1% of their paycheque to charity and give them a list of recommended options. Something like that could work — a nudge toward voluntary giving in a way that reduces the friction of giving, the mental load of figuring it out and the admin work of arranging it.
To the extent governments fund EA priorities, it will be on a case-by-case basis (e.g. X amount of money to Y foreign aid initiative), rather than a general “EA” bucket where money goes.
Maybe 0.1% of government budget would be viable, what do you think?
There are many upsides for the government—they could brag about how many people they saved, they could be seen as more progressive than other countries, and they could make EA more widely recognized.
But perhaps they would need to be very careful about how they go about it. Probably choose human and farm animal charities, some split between the 2 but no less than 50% to human charities. Perhaps some allocation to X-risk as well. I’d probably go like this: 10% X-risk, 50% human charities, 40% farm animal charities.
Here’s what I calculated: A budget of very small political entity in Bosnia (not the whole country) in which I live is around $3.2 billion. 0.1% of this is $3.2 million. 50% of this that would go to human charities is $1.6 million. Divided by $5000 (per life saved) that could save around 320 lives per year. And that’s just 0.05% of the budget that would be allocated to human charities.
No, this wouldn’t be politically viable. Taxes are unpopular, the vast majority of people (including both voters and politicians) have no idea what EA is, and many people don’t like EA and would be vocally opposed to something like this.
However, there may be vaguely similar ideas that might work to a limited degree. I remember hearing about an idea where employers could nudge their employees to donate 1% of their paycheque to charity and give them a list of recommended options. Something like that could work — a nudge toward voluntary giving in a way that reduces the friction of giving, the mental load of figuring it out and the admin work of arranging it.
To the extent governments fund EA priorities, it will be on a case-by-case basis (e.g. X amount of money to Y foreign aid initiative), rather than a general “EA” bucket where money goes.
Maybe 0.1% of government budget would be viable, what do you think?
There are many upsides for the government—they could brag about how many people they saved, they could be seen as more progressive than other countries, and they could make EA more widely recognized.
But perhaps they would need to be very careful about how they go about it. Probably choose human and farm animal charities, some split between the 2 but no less than 50% to human charities. Perhaps some allocation to X-risk as well. I’d probably go like this: 10% X-risk, 50% human charities, 40% farm animal charities.
Here’s what I calculated: A budget of very small political entity in Bosnia (not the whole country) in which I live is around $3.2 billion. 0.1% of this is $3.2 million. 50% of this that would go to human charities is $1.6 million. Divided by $5000 (per life saved) that could save around 320 lives per year. And that’s just 0.05% of the budget that would be allocated to human charities.
What you said in this reply is covered in my original answer. Many governments already have a foreign aid budget.