Now for the tenth and final plank of my presidential platform (after which a few more semi-random comments, as often, if not always):

No 10. The IRS has to go.

I am not qualified to judge whether a flat tax is wise or practical, or a consumption or VAT tax. I’ve never studied the matter in earnest. But I do know that, even well short of any revolutionary change to the way the Federal government funds itself, I have roughly the same problem with the IRS code that I have with the USPS manual: It is excessively, bizarrely and unnecessarily complicated. 

As with the USPS, Medicare and so on, these complications add vast transactional costs to the system, slow everything down (which imposes other very real costs), and increase the rate of error.

If there were a compelling reason—concerning fairness, say, as in education issues—for such complexity that would be one thing. But there isn’t; again, quite the reverse. The complexity of the system advantages those who can afford to hire expensive lawyers, lobbyists and accountants to navigate and exploit it, and that, invariably, is corporate in nature either directly or indirectly: It’s either the company or the high-placed corporate employee who can afford it. This is not fair.

So flat tax or no flat tax, Congress needs to cut the present IRS code by at least 90 percent in length. I am not entirely content to leave exactly how to do this to experts, but I can't do it myself. If it cannot be done, then we need to abolish the IRS as it now exists, and as Sen. Richard Lugar once proposed, and just start over. 

If a normal, typical American citizen cannot do his or her taxes in a few hours without the aid of a lawyer or an accountant, something is seriously wrong. A recent poll revealed that most Americans would rather go to the dentist than do their taxes. O holy cow (as Phil Rizzuto used to say)!

Worse, the $200-$300 that even average-income families have to pay to get their taxes done amounts to another kind of tax, a tax collected not by government but by businesses that have manipulated the government for their own private benefit. This is an outrage, and if I could swing it I’d start a national tax revolt—basically an ultimatum to Congress: Fix this mess within one year or something like fifty million Americans will refuse to file their taxes next April 15. Think you can arrest fifty million Americans? We dare you to try.

Some of my ten ideas are compatible with a “small is beautiful”, “government is the problem” ideological perspective. But others demand that government, including the Federal government, do more, not less. This may seem contradictory to small or rigid minds, but it isn't contradictory at all. I am a liberal of a certain kind, but one with a conservative temperament. 

I am a lot like, I think, William Allen White who, I suppose, might have influenced me many years back.  (Don't know who he was?  Pity....) I am the sort of liberal, now evidently obsolete, who thinks that government's role is to insure a level playing field and maximum feasible democratic participation at the governmental level and about the issues where it matters most. I am not for government "getting out of the way" but I am also not for government "getting in the way", as when government doesn't level the playing field but occupies, dominates and smothers it with social engineering schemes that can never work as intended. As explained several posts ago, the original 19th century liberalism tilted to the former impulse, postwar American liberalism toward the latter. I like the more balanced kind in between the extremes championed by the first Roosevelt more than  the second, the balanced liberalism whose goals need to be approached carefully, i.e., with a conservative temperament. 

William Allen White was a Republican (after all, he was from Kansas) and a liberal, as I have just defined it. He admired small town America and small town values and virtues. He feared gigantism, but had nothing against the efficient mass production of basic goods. It raised living standards and put a dent in real poverty. What he would have thought of putting the country's finances in hock in order to buy tons of crap from China I think I can guess.

Alas, our troubles are too many and too complex to be approached with a simpleminded ideological fixation. We need to really think about our circumstances, not substitute labels for thought instead. I don’t worry about others not being about to understand that my ideas are in fact ideologically consistent. Besides, I myself worry about them being effective in solving real problems more than I worry about consistency. That's too much a luxury when there's work to be done.

So, dear non-existent reader, if we institute a Baby Bond program of national service, ban property tax-based public education, repeal the 17th amendment, devolve controversial moral questions and health care issues to the state level, get a better grip on biotechnology and the distorting effects of television on our political process, redesign DHS, and put both the USPS and IRS out their Kafkaesque miseries, we will have really accomplished something in my first presidential term. (And I have lots more good ideas for my second term.) Think that's impossible to do in one term? Maybe,  but go back and look at what TR accomplished between re-election in 1904 and the end of 1908. You'll be startled if the past quarter century is all you have to go on as precedent.

“Is that all?”, you ask? No, of course not. We have to rationalize immigration policy, as President Bush tried but failed to do. Our drug laws are stupid and counterproductive. The way we deal with student loans is somewhere between shady and imbecilic. Obviously, our financial system has evolved in ways that have outrun minimal regulatory frameworks, and we need to fix that. As suggested already, our agricultural subsidies are a deeply destructive rip-off that, among other things, contributes to an increasingly dangerous food safety problem. But most intelligent people know all this already.

We could, by the way, stimulate a productivity explosion and reduce workplace accidents if we’d institute a national afternoon naptime, like other civilized societies have done in history (I’m serious). We could get an even larger productivity boost if we could ban per-hour pay for services (from your plumber, your electrician, your carpenter, your gardener, your ratty lawyer, too) and pay for everything on a by-the-job basis. (Think about that one for a moment in terms of incentive structures, and you’ll see what I mean.)

But I’m realistic. Instituting a Baby Bond-National Service Program would be simple compared to tearing agribusiness parasites away from the public teat. Elect me President, and I’ll do it. I promise. Hey, I didn't do so well in the 2008 election, but there's 2012 just ahead. Harold Stassen's got nothing on me. (Never head of him either?!)