A couple of assumptions that you did not state.
You assume that your favored candidate’s budget contains truly optimal uses of charitable dollars. You need a step down function unless your preferred charity is funding government programs.
You assume that the opposition candidate’s spending is valueless. Otherwise you need to consider the relative merits.
You assume that there is no portion of the opposition budget that is preferable. If you believe that each candidate has some portions right, you need to be subtracting this spending from the value of your contribution.
You assume that the proposed budget will be implemented. Given the track record of campaign promises, this is an iffy assumption. As this probability is necessarily less than 100% it should reduce the value of your contribution.
These assumptions are the mind killing biases of politics.
No, they don’t all have to be assumed. What needs to happen is something resembling their budget, on the order of plus or minus a few trillion dollars, is implemented.
At least $100 billion = the approximate marginal altruistic value of the “better” candidate. I think this is also very conservative. The annual federal budget is around $3 trillion right now, making $12 trillion over a 4-year term, and Barack Obama and Mitt Romney differ on trillions of dollars in their proposed budgets. It would be pretty strange to me if, given a perfect understanding of what they’d both do, I would only care altruistically about 100 billion of those dollars, marginally speaking.
ETA: However, even this is unlikely to be entirely affected by the outcome of the presidential election, as this depends mostly on Congress.
A couple of assumptions that you did not state. You assume that your favored candidate’s budget contains truly optimal uses of charitable dollars. You need a step down function unless your preferred charity is funding government programs.
You assume that the opposition candidate’s spending is valueless. Otherwise you need to consider the relative merits.
You assume that there is no portion of the opposition budget that is preferable. If you believe that each candidate has some portions right, you need to be subtracting this spending from the value of your contribution.
You assume that the proposed budget will be implemented. Given the track record of campaign promises, this is an iffy assumption. As this probability is necessarily less than 100% it should reduce the value of your contribution.
These assumptions are the mind killing biases of politics.
No, they don’t all have to be assumed. What needs to happen is something resembling their budget, on the order of plus or minus a few trillion dollars, is implemented.
ETA: However, even this is unlikely to be entirely affected by the outcome of the presidential election, as this depends mostly on Congress.
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