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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Treasury Direct is for stuff like savings bonds. If you want to donate, it's https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h..., but they're not directed donations.

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It would be pretty interesting if certain departments in the government could get direct payments. For example if the last $100 on your taxes you could choose any department to allocate to.

I've always wondered what government funding would look like if taxpayers could allocate their tax dollars at their own discretion. I don't think it would be all that functional in practice, but the idea of it seems interesting.

The amount of money going towards advertisement for specific government bodies would explode. Maybe good for civics education, probably not good for the government's budget.

Sounds like any government with little to no taxes to me. Do you want anything? Pay for it. No subsidized social services. No nothing. Pay up.

I think the idea would be that the government would collect the same amount of taxes, but the taxpayers would get to directly allocate their portion where they want it to go. They couldn't decide to not pay taxes at all, or even pay less.

That would be an absolute shit show. But it would genuinely be interesting to see what people value. Right before the inevitable collapse.

I saw a study where they asked people to estimate the budget and discussed how wrong they got it.

We do have a tiny bit of say with the presidential election fund.

Healthcare is already a huge fraction of the government budget. The lack of free universal healthcare in the U.S. isn’t due to cost.

Those that want free healthcare could easily fund it. Honestly I think it would work far better than anyone imagines.

I am a huge fan of hypothecation, and the fact that no politician wants to even consider it says a lot about the world we live in.

Pardon me but I'm laughing out loud here. Who is this for?

People who buy into the idea of government being a societal good, and aren't bitter old cynics.

I suppose someone could submit a foia request and get a list of the people who donated and how much. I suspect that either nobody is donating to them, or that lots of interesting people/companies are regularly donating large amounts to them.

It’s not broken out per donation, but https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/gift-contributions-... has the monthly totals.

Too bad you can't write conditionals in the memo area:

Not for war, over-criminalization, or tax breaks for megacorps, REITs, or billionaires.

Heh, a statement probably most people agree with, but which would render a large amount of "business as usual" unfunded :-D

Well, if you think about it, mass withholding of paying individual income taxes until specific political reforms are made could be an interesting way to cut the MIC, campaign corruption (finance reform), and address the lack of universal single-payer health-care (not Medicare but not quite UK NHS). We're funding horrible shit but voting for the red flavor or the blue flavor of the property party doesn't make a damn bit of difference.

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