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Article:
  Peer-to-Peer Taxation
Subject:   One dollar one vote versus one man one vote
Date:   2001-07-10 09:28:38
From:   brian.mcconnell
Response to: Just two comments

One of the readers commented that such a system would be biased in the favor of the wealthy (if you pay more taxes, you have more of an influence on the direction of public spending). You could call this "one dollar, one vote."


While this is one possible outcome of the system, in most cases it is not practical to track each individual's tax contribution at the local level (because sales and use tax is a major revenue source for local governments). Because of this, it will be easier to sum all of the taxes, divide them by the number of registered voters, and give each voter an averaged amount of money to control.


Even if you applied this to income tax, which is trackable, it would be a nightmare to couple a peer to peer disbursement system with the existing income tax collection systems. It would be far easier to calculate an average per capita amount, and have people vote on that instead.


This is much easier to do, and it is fair because everybody is voting on the use of the same amount of money. Hence, every registered voter has the same voting power.


Brian McConnell