saving ink

This is a brilliant idea. The short summary I’ve linked above is definitely worth reading, and if I can get my hands on the original paper I’d love to read it as well, but in short, the idea is:

Well, you know when you’re filling out your taxes, you have that box that says, “would you like to contribute to a political campaign?” In Poland, you can give 1% of your taxes to a charity of your choice, so every year in April there are billboards all over the country with sad pictures of sick or poor children asking for your 1%. And you know what? It works. It’s not much, and a lot of charities without the funds for billboards get left behind, but it’s a start.

So the idea here is to expand on that. What if you could choose how part of your taxes are used - say, 10%, or even 25%? The majority of your taxes are still handled by the government and dedicated to what it deems necessary (or what the most powerful lobbyists have decided, but that depends on the country, of course). But even 10% of the taxes of a nation of people is a significant amount, and can directly influence spending decisions much more efficiently than a Congress full of representatives being pushed around by special interests.

I would love to see this implemented in a small, progressive country like Sweden or the Netherlands, and see if it could be used as a model for larger countries down the road.