I agree with MOST of what you say here. I will take slight issue with your financial statement. $20 billion dollars (the suggested cost of the 2024 election) is probably pretty close to correct. You say that would cost each taxpayer roughly a cup of coffee per year. You MUST be drinking incredibly great coffee :-). With 300,000,000 peopl…
I agree with MOST of what you say here. I will take slight issue with your financial statement. $20 billion dollars (the suggested cost of the 2024 election) is probably pretty close to correct. You say that would cost each taxpayer roughly a cup of coffee per year. You MUST be drinking incredibly great coffee :-). With 300,000,000 people in the country, that's $66/person. WOW, that is the most expensive coffee I have ever heard of LOL! And probably slightly more because not ALL of our 300,000,000 people are taxpayers.
I will say though that I completely agree that state or federally financed elections should be required and private organizations should be absolutely BARRED from spending money on electoral politics. We need to eliminate PACs completely and require that everyone who donates to any political contests be identified with the amount contributed.
And note that there would be no need to ban PACs or restrict donor actions in any way. Not that such restrictions would get past the Supreme court. Just keep matching what the rich and corporations spend and watch politicians start bragging how much money they are getting from "average voters".
Median (loosely, "average") taxpayers (~70K income or less) are in low marginal tax rates. Most of the taxes used to pay that $20 billion (as any program) would come from higher income families. Indeed, the wealthy would need to give up a few more cups of coffee.
Divide a $2 trillion federal budget by 125 million households we get an "average" of $16K taxes paid. Median/average households pay nothing like that. Adding $20 billion and you get a trivial increase in taxes for Median/average households.
But the main point is that the "successful" (my code word, I confess) already contribute campaign money. It is the median/average/low-income people whose votes are rendered irrelevant/mute by our campaign finance system.
I agree with MOST of what you say here. I will take slight issue with your financial statement. $20 billion dollars (the suggested cost of the 2024 election) is probably pretty close to correct. You say that would cost each taxpayer roughly a cup of coffee per year. You MUST be drinking incredibly great coffee :-). With 300,000,000 people in the country, that's $66/person. WOW, that is the most expensive coffee I have ever heard of LOL! And probably slightly more because not ALL of our 300,000,000 people are taxpayers.
I will say though that I completely agree that state or federally financed elections should be required and private organizations should be absolutely BARRED from spending money on electoral politics. We need to eliminate PACs completely and require that everyone who donates to any political contests be identified with the amount contributed.
And note that there would be no need to ban PACs or restrict donor actions in any way. Not that such restrictions would get past the Supreme court. Just keep matching what the rich and corporations spend and watch politicians start bragging how much money they are getting from "average voters".
Median (loosely, "average") taxpayers (~70K income or less) are in low marginal tax rates. Most of the taxes used to pay that $20 billion (as any program) would come from higher income families. Indeed, the wealthy would need to give up a few more cups of coffee.
Divide a $2 trillion federal budget by 125 million households we get an "average" of $16K taxes paid. Median/average households pay nothing like that. Adding $20 billion and you get a trivial increase in taxes for Median/average households.
But the main point is that the "successful" (my code word, I confess) already contribute campaign money. It is the median/average/low-income people whose votes are rendered irrelevant/mute by our campaign finance system.