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Comments on Sunday 19 September 2004:
I just had the most fantastic idea ever for a rule regarding political campaigning. It should be illegal for any government or political party employee to speak of anything being paid for by the government, by the treasury, or by their party, when that thing would not actually be paid for out of the party's own funds. Instead, they should have to speak of "taxpayer money" or "your money" paying for things.

Imagine the ineffectual chaos as political campaigns are rephrased. "Under a Party X government, three billion dollars of your money will go to improve education" is so very much less compelling a claim than the more common "Party X will put three billion dollars into improving education." It's especially effective with tax rebates and reductions. "Under a Party X government, you will get a cheque for one hundred dollars of your money back!"

Oh yes, single mothers and retired people and the ill will receive benefits from your money, road repairs will be made with your money, and we'll have a space program or whatever research paid for out of your money. All these fantastic government offers sound so very much less fantastic when it's explicitly stated that you are paying for it all. Since that is and has always been the case, and is very much obfuscated by the people in power (and those who want to be), it should be constitutionally mandated that all 'government expenditure' mentioned in any public context must also have mentioned that the money they are spending is the citizens' money, not the government's. See how popular a multibillion dollar war on a smiley moustache man is then. [07:41]

Esther
What a wonderful idea.

Kizawa
Great plan... but who is the smiley moustache man?

Maxor
I believe he's talking about Mr. Hussien.

Soli
The only problem I see here is that it would further degrade the sorry state of civic duty in the US (if implemented here, at least). The people whose money is actually spent are those that have made a lot of other peoples' money- let's face it, no one gets rich under Capitalism by doing more productive work; people get rich by taking the profits generated by others. As it stands right now, worker X gets a fraction of the value of his labour back in wages, and another fraction in public education, health care, social services, etc. He still gets screwed, but imagine how badly he would be if people didn't want to fund anything or pay any taxes.

RavenBlack
Taxes are used pretty inefficiently - even the less taxed ordinary-joe wages might well be more effective for the ordinary-joe than the reflection of those wages he gets in government services. While the rich people may pay more taxes, the richest don't do so proportionally, thanks to tax havens and the like, and very little of the taxed money comes back to our Joe.

KJB
This is kind of like the fundraising brochure for a museum up in Alberta (Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump), where the text is in three languages: English, German, and Japanese.

I wish I could be that brilliant sometimes.

That being said, good idea of yours.
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