I wouldn’t be comfortable with this unless there was strong evidence showing it would work.
People without children (in the public schooling system) will often complain that they pay taxes for public schooling. However, they still benefit from being in a well educated society. This is just one example of people being bad at making decisions on where tax money should go.
Another valid point already raised is that earmarking donations in charities is generally ineffective, and I can’t imagine governments being particularly different.
Again, the terms of the trade is set by the government. The government does not have to accept any transaction which doesn’t increase its preference satisfaction. So even if it is the case that individuals are bad at making decisions on where tax money should go, that would not mean that the outcome of this kind of trade would be negative.
The government already allocates money to different policy areas in the budget. That should make it comparatively easy to see to that the ear-marked tax money actually goes to the policy area they were supposed to go to.
I wouldn’t be comfortable with this unless there was strong evidence showing it would work.
People without children (in the public schooling system) will often complain that they pay taxes for public schooling. However, they still benefit from being in a well educated society. This is just one example of people being bad at making decisions on where tax money should go.
Another valid point already raised is that earmarking donations in charities is generally ineffective, and I can’t imagine governments being particularly different.
Again, the terms of the trade is set by the government. The government does not have to accept any transaction which doesn’t increase its preference satisfaction. So even if it is the case that individuals are bad at making decisions on where tax money should go, that would not mean that the outcome of this kind of trade would be negative.
The government already allocates money to different policy areas in the budget. That should make it comparatively easy to see to that the ear-marked tax money actually goes to the policy area they were supposed to go to.