Where Your Taxes Really Go

There's a lot of discussion about how politically useful it would be for taxpayers to actually receive a receipt like this, showing exactly how much of each person's taxes paid for which part of the federal budget.

Regardless of how the parties try to spin it, putting this kind of concrete, specific information into the hands of taxpayers would be an unalloyed good thing for small-d democracy.

No more blowhards in bars claiming that half the federal budget goes for foreign aid or that food stamps cost more than the Pentagon. Pull the facts out of your wallet.

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo:

Via Ezra, here's a sample of what the taxes of someone making $34,140 a year go to pay for:

Source: The Third Way