You can say what an increase in funding is meant to finance without earmarking the funds. Other countries do that just fine. In this example, you’d run on lowering property taxes, because campaign on the tax you’re increasing is never a good plan.
I get that there’ll always be some taxes collected at different levels, like some federal, some state level and some municipal, and that does to some extent direct how the funds can be used, but earmarking the funds beyond that just adds complexity and fucks up budgeting. It’s how you end up with stuff like every other thing on the budget borrowing from social security.
The real thing hindering these kinds of reform is that American politics are inherently resistant to change. With a two-party system in near equilibrium there will rarely be any opportunity to change big things, and in practice most big changes in the US happen at the judicial branch as a result. For example, WA doesn’t have income tax due to the WA supreme court declaring it unconstitutional, and changing the constitution is nearly impossible to get the votes for in the current political climate.
Why? Knowing that my property taxes pay for one set of things and my income tax pays for something else does nothing for me. In the end, all that really matters is how much my net pay is, and whether the government is spending its income reasonably.
In the school example, my area also pools it, I believe statewide. The schools also receive federal money from my income tax. I don’t care, as long as the schools have the funding they need. Which they don’t.
I don’t get to choose what kind of taxes I pay or what they go to (except that dollar to the presidential campaign fund), so how do I really benefit from knowing which goes where? Just pool it all and make a budget! It’s like Americans are addicted to overcomplicating things.
I know that’s how some places do it now, but why do specific taxes need to pay for specific stuff? Earmarking the funds just makes it harder to allocate them.
In some cases it makes some sense at face value, like having road or fuel taxes pay for road upkeep, but even then it results in having to scale the taxes to meet demand, in possibly untenable ways. Also, you don’t need to drive a car to benefit from roads and related infrastructure, so even the seemingly obvious connections aren’t necessarily fair.
I especially object to using local property taxes to pay for schools, because this just means affluent areas get lots of school funding (in addition to the donations they surely get), while schoold in poor areas get scraps. Which in turn makes it even harder for students to escape poverty.
I’d rather pay income tax than property tax. The problem with property taxes is that lots of elderly people in old homes with no plans to sell are getting taxed as if they have million dollar house money. They’re basically getting punished for the gentrification of their neighborhood.
If we collected that money from income taxes and capital gains taxes instead, the results would be more equitable. This would likely increase my own tax burden, but I can afford it a lot better than my elderly neighbors. They can pay when they sell their house, which is when they have the money.
Dude, most other countries, bar the dictatorships, have more changes happening than the US. Most other countries don’t have two-party systems with filibusters, debt ceilings disconnected from the budget, and whatever else.
Any country implementing parliamentarism, especially those not implementing first past the post, will have a lot less stalemates, because there are multiple other parties to make horse trades with. Do you have experience with any other country’s system of governance?