Would it be politically viable to campaign for EA tax? Like a very small (but extremely important) tax that's used exclusively to fund EA charities?
Or for allocation of some small part of government spending on EA charities, like 1%?
1% is not a huge number, but given the enormous sizes of government budgets, it would FLOOD EA charities with money. Probably all the needs of current EA charities would be filled and EA would need to find other less effective cause areas. Which is great.
Perhaps saving a life would become more expensive, it would go to $10,000 or even more. The more expensive it is, the better. The goal is for this price to go to infinity, that is, that no more lives can be saved with donations, because all the preventable causes of death have been prevented.
If not 1% how much? Is there any percentage that would be politically viable?
What's the maximum?
In which country is such an initiative most likely to succeed?
My idea is perhaps countries like New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden...
But if one country adopted such a policy, it could motivate others to follow the suit.
Any potential drawbacks?
Perhaps regular people would be less motivated to donate if this was covered by governments?
But perhaps even if many countries allocated 1%, there would still be need for place for donations by individuals?
Maybe 0.1% of government budget would be viable, what do you think?
There are many upsides for the government - they could brag about how many people they saved, they could be seen as more progressive than other countries, and they could make EA more widely recognized.
But perhaps they would need to be very careful about how they go about it. Probably choose human and farm animal charities, some split between the 2 but no less than 50% to human charities. Perhaps some allocation to X-risk as well. I'd probably go like this: 10% X-risk, 50% human charities, 4... (read more)