Allocating Our Tax Dollars: WS Penny Poll Results

[DBP]

This “story” was given to me by my friend John Repp. He and I were hanging out with other folks from the West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice (WSNPJ) last Sunday. We were taking an informal poll of people’s spending priorities?

How would you spend $1.242 trillion? Pretend you are Congress. $1.242 trillion is our nation’s discretionary spending for one year. Congress has complete power to spend that money the way it wants.

West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice held a penny poll to find out what people walking through the Junction on Sunday, April 14, 2013 thought. Each person participating got 10 pennies. Each penny represented $123 billion and there were 5 categories. The Federal Budget actually has 11 categories.

The 5 categories we used can be seen above. 44 people voted and the results were, in descending order:

Education 34%

Health Care 26%

Environment 23%

Humanitarian Aid 15%

Pentagon 2%

After the poll, citizens were given a leaflet (http://tinyurl.com/d342hjl) telling what the Federal Government actually spends our money on, including 47% on current and past military!

But what about all the jobs that would be lost if we cut the military? Actually we would create more jobs by spending according to the priorities of West Seattleites.

Spending on education, for example, creates more than 16,000 jobs per billion dollars than spending on the military. So each person at the Junction who dropped a penny into the Education jar voted to create 1,984,000 new jobs! And several kids put all their pennies in education.

Clearly, if the priorities of the Congress followed the votes of the people of West Seattle, we would have a very different world.

To see the results of the citywide penny poll, go to http://www.wwfor.org a few days after tax day which is April 15, 2013.

–John Repp, WSNPJ

 

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[skeeter]

The problem is North Korea is in the process of building a nuclear weapon and a delivery system to the United States. Is 2% of federal spending is enough to stop them?

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[Ken]

2% is plenty to stop them The 47% means we are ready to pave NK with glass from end to end several times a year. And as our wingnuts have proved in recent decades, an invasion and occupation would be an order of magnitude higher cost.

North Korea is always bargaining and using the rest of the worlds willingness to avoid killing most North Koreans because their dictators are nuts, to get heating oil and wheat. When Bush cut the oil program Clinton set up, the NK nuts restarted the nuke and missile programs.

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[DBP]

If only we could hack into North Korea’s computer system and disable their centrifuges, like the Israelis did with Iran . . .

The problem is that North Koreans use slide rules and abacuses to do their advanced calculations, and American defense experts don’t know how those things even work. Therefore, the only way for us to disable North Korea’s slide rule and abacus network is to destroy it.

And that means a direct nuclear strike on Pyongyang.

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[JKB]

…in the textbook under ‘False Choice’.

Hey, where does my “do not spend the money” penny go?

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[DBP]

A few people tried to exercise a “do not spend the money at all” option.

I chased one guy through the farmers market and halfway down Erskine before he finally dropped the pennies.

That was a close call.

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[waynster]

DBP… got your exercise for the day I see and on the heath care penny….lol

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[Author]

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