Paycheck Transparency
Most people have no idea how their tax contributions are spent; let’s make this better. Every paycheck should have greater transparency as to how funds sent to the public treasury are allocated. Improved transparency will help people better understand how their money is being spent and will facilitate a better sense of ownership of government finances. Providing more detailed information for each paycheck would be relatively easy to produce and yield significant benefits for transparency.
Current
Proposed
This example, which certainly could be improved upon, accomplishes two things. First, it provides a better translation of how the public resource pool is being utilized. A wording change of “education” or “military” is far easier to understand than “Fed Withholding” or “Fed MED/EE”. This helps demystify the tax-harvest to tax-spend process. Second, notice the use of the word “we,” not “federal.” We are the government whether we like it or not. Whether we are a nation-state, city state, LLC, DAO, or any other form of decision-making group, we are part of a community that must manage central resource pools. Embrace we. #EmbraceWe
Fiscal Data | https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spending/categories/