Opinion Contributor
Explaining government's role
Americans do not love their government. In fact, they don’t even like it.
Last summer, the federal government ranked dead last in approval among 25 major industries, according to a Gallup poll. Even lawyers and oil tycoons receive better marks.
Continue ReadingThe constant government-bashing from the right probably has a lot to do with this. But it’s also because people can’t be expected to like something they know so little about. Even the majority of those who receive direct benefits from the government like Social Security or unemployment, do not know that government is the source, according to recent studies.
At the same time, those of us who are aware when we’re interacting with government usually do so under less-than-ideal circumstances — when a tax deadline looms, when a parent or spouse is sick or has died. Unfortunately, government doesn’t usually try and make these difficult interactions any easier.
So we’ve devised “iGov”—a set of principles and practices, outlined below, that can help make government more accessible, more comprehensible and perhaps even more human.
We proposed a “taxpayer receipt” last year, a one-stop way for citizens to know exactly where their tax money goes. That idea has been widely embraced. Bipartisan legislation was introduced in the House and Senate, and the White House released its own version of the receipt online.
This was a strong start. But “iGov” can take the concept several steps further. Over the long-term, we need a system that presents an accurate, comprehensive picture of the tangled relationships among government, citizens and their communities. This system would line up costs (taxes, fees and the like) and benefits (Social Security, Medicare, subsidized school loans) side-by-side — giving all Americans a personalized peek into the bureaucracy they both finance and depend on over the course of their lives. The result, we hope, would be a better-informed citizenry—and a citizenry less hostile to government, since it would now be informed about what government really does.
iGov would offer citizens an easy way to track their relationship with the federal government over their lifetimes. Each citizen would have his or her own iGov account, through which the federal government would be able to present the accumulation of the benefits that a person has ever received from across the government. A single click would reveal what the government has meant in a person’s life, in the most concrete terms.
Specifically, iGov would offer all Americans the chance to see their income, taxes paid on that income and personal benefits received. Costs, meanwhile, would be reflected via a longitudinal version of the tax¬payer receipt we proposed in our earlier articles. For programs harder to quantify on a per-citizen basis, like roads and education, agencies could show costs and benefits via Google maps. The model here would be the way in which the Obama administration highlighted the benefits of the Recovery Act using a map that breaks down costs to the level of state or ZIP code.
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Ethan Porter
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David Kendall
Readers' Comments (13)
wayknow Party: Conservative
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Mar. 12, 2012 - 10:23 AM EST
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Read all 13 comments in our forumThe government is bloated, corrupt, and inefficient............
It has no competition to keep it lean, so it just grows, and sucks more money out of the economy without limit.
It's loaded with people who have an interest in making it constantly larger, because it INCREASES their power.
And of course, it has media outlets like this one in it's pocket, to defend this raping of the American taxpayer.
Yeah - let folks know that the government is the great benefactor when if fact it is just redistribution of wealth at its worst. The gov has no $$ of its own -- only has what taxpayers are forced to pay. Be sure to explain on igov that taxpayers send $$ to IRS/Fed gov and then the Fed gov decides how "best" to redistribute. What a crock! igov is just another propaganda mechanism.
Government the least efficient and least accountable 'solution' to any problem. The founders were wise enough to realize it, which is why they so wisely sought to constrain it to essential functions only (military, law enforcement, foreign relations.... )
What we have now is a monster - a collection of bureaucrats populating institutions beholden to themselves and feeding off the private sector.
Our campaigner-in-chief is no president. He, Pelosi, Reid, Boxer, Kerry and the other liberals, along with the biased media, Soros, Unions, Acorn, etc., based the entire 2008 campaign on lies. They have no problem governing against the will of the American people. I'll never vote for another democrat.
All states should require a photo ID for voters.
I think govenors make better presidents than senators.
Our government is a malignant fast growing tumor. It is killing it's host. It is wasteful. Nonsensical . Intrusive. Disrespectful. Entitled. Corrupt. Inefficient. It needs to be shrunken down to pre- New Deal levels before it destroys all that is good and fine about America. Some dippy liberal propaganda web site to make me feel warm and fuzzy about government ? You must be joking
To say that Americans are anti-government is a bit misleading. It's true that most Americans do not know what the goverment does for them and a step toward educating the voter base is a welcome move toward a better system. However, we are not anti-government. We are anti-THIS KIND OF-government. The main issues that people are upset about are mostly rooted in ideological differences, lack of historical knowledge and other cultural issues. We all have a different view of what America is and what America ought to be. But my own belief is that the main issue that Americans are upset about are not what the government does or doesn't do for us or to us. We understand that the line is arbitrary. We can run a government that is small and offers little help or interferes very little in our lives or we can run a government that is large and offers lots of help and interferes more with our personal lives. We attempt to draw that line through elections. But the main issue that, I believe, most Americans are upset about is a lack of accountability for elected officials. Unelected Supreme Court justices are there for life- above the law. Congressional representatives regularly bend, twist and distort the laws for their own personal agendas. Presidents can do whatever they want and we the people are left with no recourse. Now, elections are so far out of control (or under the control of money) that regular Americans are left with no options other than to talk about it on the internet. Now, with PIPA and SOPA, those lines are being blurred and freedom of speech on the internet is in serious danger as well. We the people are forced to live in a polyarchy- not a democracy. Our government is not only out of touch, but also out of reach for recourse. That is why we are anti-THIS KIND OF-government. It's not ours anymore. And there's not a thing we can do about it.
Back when our Founding Fathers designed the laws to govern their new land, they did everything in their power to keep the power with the people and out of government. We've changed a lot. And not for the better. There's a reason the liberals and unions keep real history out of public schools - their ideas wouldn't stand a chance without indoctrination! I recommend the show "American Ride" for your Founding enlightenment, or any number of books on the subject.
Make sure you ask the people who log on to iGov what their income is and also point out how alternative private sector programs to Social Security would compare. Telling someone how great something is without comparing the alternative is pure propaganda.
Has anyone checked the associations of the two authors here??? Ethan Porter is a contributing editor at DEMOCRACY JOURNAL, whose mission is to "build a vibrant and vital progressivism." David Kendall is a fellow at THIRD WAY, self-described as "centrist" but whose honorary chairs consist largely of Democrats including far left Dems Rep. James Clyburn, Jared Pullos, and Allyson Schwartz. While clearly, not as far left as the folks at Democracy Journal, it is clearly a Democrat operation. That is well and good. But NO ONE should be fooled into thinking that iGov and the information contained therein will be anything more than a propaganda tool for the Democrat Party.
Government is the problem.
this is what happens when you spend all your time listening to limbaugh; you end up believing all kinds of crap from the fevered dreams of nut-jobs. you think Americans no longer support social security? medicare? Laws to keep our water and air clean?
you been spending too much time in the right-wing echo chamber!
Yes, that is the problem. If people would just love the government a little bit more, we would have a government that could solve all our problems. Get with it people and start thinking and behaving like a North Korean. Jeepers.
"entitlement" instead of "igovt" acting as an intermediary, assign an illegal with her anchor baby (a new American citizen) to you and they come knock on your door each month and demand a check directly from you as she and her baby are "entitiled" to your earned income ..... cut out the govt as a middleman ........ that would also let taxpayers get a clear picture of where there hard earned income is going ????? how do you homeboys think that concept would go down with John Q Citizen?
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