Feb 14, 2016

Clarifying the money paths in a government will enhance democracy

Imagine a government with just 2 revenue sources and 2 expenses: income tax (+10 million), oil revenue (+10 million), welfare (-10 million) and police (-10 million).

If you think of the government revenues and expenses as follows, 
   income tax  --->> welfare
   oil revenue --->> police
you, as a taxpayer, may get angry at the welfare recipients. As someone may say, why am I working so hard to subsidize the lazy?

However, If you think of the government revenues and expenses as follows, 
   income tax  --->> police 
   oil revenue --->> welfare
you, as a taxpayer, may no longer have a reason to get angry at the welfare recipients. That doesn't mean you have no more complaints. You may complain why you are not getting a share of the oil revenue. In other words, shouldn't the oil revenue be converted to an unconditional basic income? On the other side, you, as a welfare recipient, can tell the rich in their face that you are not getting a single cent from them.

Currently, the money flow is not explicit. Everything goes into and comes out from one common bag.
   income tax,oil revenue--->>|One common bag|--->>police,welfare

As a result, anybody can claim anything that suits his purpose.

If governments can show the path of money flowing from revenues to expenses, citizens will be more discerning, leading to better democracy. Transparency is supposed to be a virtue of good democratic governments.

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