Modest proposal regarding US budget troubles

[grouchyoldcoot]

Two of the big threads of political discussion right now are the budget deficit and the rapid rise in anonymous campaign money; it's stuck me that there is an easy way to use one to solve the other. Since all that anonymous money is basically being used to buy votes, wouldn't it make more sense to just buy the votes directly? The idea is that a

Comments

[bhudson]

It's really not that huge. $4 billion for Congress in 2010 (*) is a tiny, tiny drop in the bucket when faced with funding social programs for 300+ million citizens, not to mention funding stupid wars. Can you raise 300x that amount with your proposal? That's what's needed.

[grouchyoldcoot]

Well, as I say, it's growing exponentially- I think the numbers for Congress and the Presidential election in 2012 will be quite a bit larger. The state and local elections draw a lot less per election, but across the country those numbers add up. Plus, you know what they say- $10B here, $10B there, pretty soon you're talking about real money!

[bhudson]

The economy is also growing exponentially, so you have to show that you have a bigger power law to show that your proposal will ever catch up.

It just seems so much easier, not to mention politically acceptable, to simply pull the plug on grandma and on black kids.

[grouchyoldcoot]

Hey, outside groups spent four times as much on the 2010 midterm election than they did on the previous midterm in 2006! (See Miller-McCune article and this Public Citizen report). And a lot of that money is impossible to track, so it's potentially larger. That's a *lot* faster than the growth rate of the economy. I swear, there's a huge financial resource here.

[bhudson]

That's nothing compared to the growth in iPhone sales during the same period. You could tax hipsters to finish filling up the hole. Disenfranchise the already-disenfranchised; tax the annoying beautiful people. That would ensure the blackberrians can accumulate the wealth and power to which they are entitled.