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Originally Posted by redpoint5
A single pool of funds can still maintain accountability for spending. To say that all of fund x must be spent on use x is kinda silly, because needs aren't always consistent and predictable. If there's an over funding in one area for a particular year, those funds should be shifted, refunded, or rainy day funded rather than wasted.
My wife and I have (in essence) a joint account. It's not like we budget for food and if we hit our food budget decide we're not eating for a few days, and likewise if we have excess food budget, don't splurge on fillet mignon.
Either certain services are both essential and best administered by the state and should come from the general fund, or they are inessential or better served by other entities and not funded at all. Everything else is incompetence, ignorance, or corruption.
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I agree - most people don't. (and I mixed up you with Oil Pan for some reason)
Oil Pan's comment.
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I would gladly pay more taxes if I knew it would result in better services. But that is not the case. The more you pay more that gets wasted on free stuff for people who don't want to work, pointless layers of government bureaucracy and failed social programs. It seems as little money as possible is spent on stuff for the tax payer.
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Plenty of people feel that way on both sides of the political divide. Pretty much every one has some items in the budget they think is wastefully and want cut. That makes it hard to get support for broad-based taxes that go into the general fund. They say "I'm not paying a penny more in taxes until we stop wasting money on XYZ". So instead we get a bunch of little taxes and fees that are dictated by law to fund one and only one thing.
Of course that is an elusion. In most states the general fund is still the largest and supports most types of spending. So a state can pass a $0.05 increase in the gas tax with the stipulation
that money can only be spent on infrastructure. Now that the "infrastructure only" pot is bigger the state can spend less out of the general fund on infrastructure on move that money to something else.