My examples are just that, examples. There's things that you wouldn't want to pay for I assume. Fill yours in as fit. We can talk about mine elsewhere if you want to.

And temporary unemployment: that falls under the practicalities. The mechanism would work in two ways:

- Most people would deposit something in the unemployment wallet because everyone has the risk of losing his job. Civil servants are not excluded from the risk if they loose the lifetime job security, and would also contribute voluntary then.

- the collective deposits of everyone into the unemployment wallet would surely be less than the ridiculous amount it is now. Therefore every freshly unemployed person would get something, but not so much as the amount today which allows unemployment to be quite a comfortable situation. And they would look for a job, any job, way faster.

It indeed needs working out, and your remarks help a lot.

1. That's one of the key objections I could expect. If you agree to see a democratic government as a opportunistic political mix of parties and programs, that would be half your answer to your first remark. Most government leaders can't  do more than try and press through a part of some of the election points of their particular party while compromising on all the rest. So I'd think not that many world-view unilateral programs get implemented anyway.

As for your last sentence: that is actually the core of what i'm aiming at. We vote for our particular political program / party, but at present it stops there. Usually we then see our politicians swagger in parliament doing exactly the opposite of why we put them there. Now, if we can take away their power to do that by detailing their budget, it would make for a very convincing extra stimulus for the political activities we, collectively, want them to perform.

There's not a big moral difference between voting for one party, meaning you endorse them to execute their program, and allocating means to the eventual government, meaning you endorse it to work for you on a number of particular fields.

2. The idea is: Vote for party XYZ -> Formation of government XYZ with program ABC ->  allocation of means by taxpayer to ABC.
Since each voter still has one vote, the more numerous lower classes can always endorse a strong lowerclass sympathetic government who can focus on mostly lowerclass aimed program points. Upperclass taxpayers would allocate their tax to those program points as well, if the government is smart enough to structure them thusly that they don't particularly disadvantage the upperclass.

I don't expect a dystopian hardline society, if that's what you're driving at. For example most political parties have some sort of humanitarian and social part in their program. So that will be mirrored in the eventual (coalition) government.

How many CEO's and millionaires are there, and what percentage of the tax do they contribue? I don't know, but I'm postive the 'regular' (non-millionaire) upper, middle and lower class make for 99% of the taxes. I figure millionaires park their capital offshore anyway.

3. A careful government has reserves built up to do emergency programs. Perhaps the system can be set up as such that a program like that would draw available funds from the particular field / fields it intends to rescue. Bailing out broke banks would be harder, or perhaps impossible, since it can count on little sympathy. I don't have the answer to that. Perhaps the end result would be less irresponsible banks that conduct a sound financial policy instead of raking in bonuses and building on air? Contrary to other subsectors, of our economy, that do have sympathy, such as green energy and the likes if an energy crisis would occur.

4. That's a practical working out problem. You could make it optional to do. If you don't want to go trough the trouble you could always opt a 'default  division', leaving it to the government in office to attribute where they want it to execute their program.

One person acting alone will usually act in it's best interest, whereas masses are dumb and will be guided like sheep. I think it's interesting to think about the result of a collective sum of the smart individual -financial- decisions. Perhaps it would be like a mitigated invisble hand transposed to the political scene? The sum of self-interest money allocations, restrained by the vestiges of the governments program that is in turn composed out of a mix of the programs of the democratically elected parties...

as of 2005, the top 1% pay 39.35% of all INCOME taxes

we're more commie than Belgium.

Sheeyit.

Or you could simply abolish "the big wallet" altogether and pay for these things outright. It would probably be cheaper, and the part of your income extorted -- I mean, allocated -- toward projects you don't care for would stay with you and go toward other, more productive uses.

@ Arocalex:

Sure. The same taxes are still due, bringing in the same amount of money to spend. Reread my answer to Godwin law's second point.

On the banks: Reread on the emergency fund. It could also  be partially provisioned or aided by retrieving from a general Economic or Finance Wallet.

On the video; interesting piece, I saved the link. But what he speaks about doesn't have the stick and carrot that essentially is the only thing politicians will listen to. It's all too woolly in my opinion. As long as we're powerless to change their behaviour through putting our money where we want it, they will revert to their usual practices. Where the money is, there they will go.

> [TI] ZoZferatu [Pw9] wrote:

> @Arocalex:

I was curious and looked at www.belstat.be to have an exact figure.

I'll just quote the stats on income taxes for 2007;

8.71% of the population makes 50k to 100k per year (upper middle class). And produces 21.48% of the taxes.

1.35% of the population makes >100k per year. (top categorie) And produces 9.12% of the taxes.

Which isn't really surprising, and in line with what I said.

Darn, must have remembered that wrong
And you mean: www.statbel.fgov.be/

No, now you're setting up permanent emergency funds, which has absolutely nothing to do with what I mean.

Your second remark: the system doesn't prevent majority-minority democracy. In fact it's an improvement to the democrat process and policy making.

Democracy in itself isn't practical.

No more replies / comments? I'd have thought tinkering with the democratic mechanism would be interesting. It opens up all kinds of leverages and possibilities for citizens to participate in government.

I'm still not seeing how you're going to juggle two governments, one voted based on votes and one on money.

Your second remark: the system doesn't prevent majority-minority democracy. In fact it's an improvement to the democrat process and policy making.

And I don't get how it's an improvement

I wouldn't make it a binding format for politicians, but more of an opinion poll. The population is consulted on its tax form (hey why not include some advertising on there, it's a prime location since every adult who is worth a damn in society gets them) in the form of a ranking scheme. Then afterwards the government accountancy agency or the opposition can rank the actual government's budget for the year vs. how much the government actually spent on it. A non binding referendum on your tax form if you will.

Making it binding would be absurd since I live in a nation of leftist elitist whiny little hippy shit ants that would stop funding the militareh and next thing you'd know there'd be an african tin pot dictator with a peepee gun in charge X(