Public Spending - Federal Budget - Big Money Does Rule

 $1.1 trillion dollars is big money to spend and it belongs to all of us to spend.  100% of us, regardless of how much money we have all get an equal say in how it is to be spent.  99% of us therefore have more government money to decide how to spend than the 1% have government money to decide how to spend, they may have most of the private money but they only get to make decisions on spending 1% of public money.

Big money does rule!  All we need to do is make categorical direct decision as citizens where we want to spend the money.  Public Money is a social media decision making tool for public benefit.

Does that sound like populism??  Up with populism!: Except from this link:

"Our conclusion is that the fabric of American politics may in fact be breaking down, but the basic structure of national power is, if anything, hardening. The most important fact about political talk is the real context in which the conversation occurs. And in 2014, that context is clear: Competition between the national political parties mostly represents competing blocs of the 1 percent. These older national political forces are now testing whether they can absorb and profit from changing local power constellations thrown up by years of persisting austerity. Whether the old center or the new populists come out on top will be a critical issue going forward; the fate not only of the Democratic Party, but the whole political system may well hang in the balance. "

The Fed budget is $1.1 trillion.  Every citizen with the right to vote should have the right to allocate their pro-rated portion of the Federal budget among about 12 major things that government spends the money on.  Then within that broad allocation the politicians and their special interest cronies can decide how to benefit themselves.  At least for the first year.

The next year every citizen gets to allocate their share of public spending among 12 sub categories of each of the 12 major spending categories.

If one of the major categories of government spending is harm reduction then citizens should be able to determine what percent of the budget they each would like to have spent on harm reduction.  Furthermore, exactly what would be spend on the relatively major categories of harm reduction.

While the agencies that are given budgets are generally related to major functions of government, some reasonable thinking about a general category of “harm reduction” would include defense, disaster, disease, health, traffic and transportation safety, law enforcement, crime investigation, Wall Street regulators, etc.

Fear is a the flip side of harm reduction, anyone wanting money in the budget can emphasize (or create) the fear factor.  Harm reduction might even be a better objective than defense and certainly is much broader in scope covering so many areas including environment which is indirect harm to us if abused. 

Basically:  What do we as Americans want from the government to enhance our pursuit of happiness.  Happiness in terms of the Constitution meaning living our lives with freedom of choice how to live respecting the freedom of others, all protected by the rights we have conferred upon ourselves. 

Private money is ours to make spending decisions.  So is public money.  Electing public officials to make our public spending decisions doesn’t work.  They are not making our decisions but the decisions of special interest.  We should at the very least determine broad category allocations.

Spending out of proportion to threats:  Wikipedia:
"The U.S. federal budget has been criticized for spending on research and action on harm reduction out of proportion to the magnitude of the underlying threats. For example, heart disease, cancer, strokes, respiratory diseases, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease claimed about 1,650,000 American lives in 2007, when the government spent about $9.6 billion researching ways to alleviate those illnesses. In contrast, terrorism had claimed about 300 lives per year on average over the previous decade, but $150 billion was spent to prevent terrorism, not including even more costly defense and war expenses.[104] However, a major terrorist attack could cause substantial economic disruption. The September 11, 2001 attacks killed almost 3000 people, but caused extensive economic disruption including about $40 billion in insurance losses, a stock market drop which took months to recover, about $15 billion in assistance to airlines, substantial tourism losses, and 430,000 lost jobs amounting to $2.8 billion in lost wages over the three months following."

Gross total consumption spending per year is roughly equal to gross production.  Total spending is roughly equal to total income.  All more or less.  That amount is about $15 Trillion.  1 trillion annual is spent by the federal government.  That is its annual budget. 

In general is would appear that:  If the annual total income is about 15 trillion and the fed budget is 1 trillion and the tax rate, pulling a figure out of the air is 20% then tax revenue would be about 3 trillion.

Here is some info from From Wikipedia to refine that general observation:

"During FY2013, the federal government collected approximately $2.77 trillion in tax revenue, up $326 billion or 13% versus FY2012 revenues of $2.45 trillion. Primary receipt categories included individual income taxes ($1,316B or 47%), Social Security/Social Insurance taxes ($948B or 34%), and corporate taxes ($274B or 10%). Other revenue types included excise, estate and gift taxes. Revenues rose across all categories in FY2013 versus FY2012 as tax cuts expired and the economy improved.^[13]
FY2013 revenues were 16.7% GDP, versus 15.2% GDP in FY2012.^[13] Tax revenues averaged approximately 18.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the 1970-2009 period, generally ranging plus or minus 2% from that level. Tax revenues are significantly affected by the economy. Recessions typically reduce government tax collections as economic activity slows. For example, tax revenues declined from $2.5 trillion in 2008 to $2.1 trillion in 2009, and remained at that level in 2010. From 2008 to 2009, individual income taxes declined 20%, while corporate taxes declined 50%. At 15.1% of GDP, the 2009 and 2010 collections were the lowest level of the past 50 years.^[14][15]"