We Live in a Sci-Fi Movie

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Jeff Block

Have you ever felt that way? Well I have, over the last couple days.

I love to play video games. My brother Mike got me Civilization 4 for Christmas, and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t get it out of the box and really play it until March. I highly recommend both the game and having a brother that gets you the game for Christmas.

So, I’m playing this game thinking that we live in a science fiction movie. I’m 32 years old, and I guess I have to admit I’m a child of the 80’s. My first game console was an Atari 2800, and for the longest time I made the (controversial) point that games never really got better than that. Combat and Pitfall. Later, Super Mario on the Nintendo. These were classics.

But now I’m into World of Warcraftand Civilization, and I just can’t believe how sophisticated the graphics and gameplay of these games have become. And the interface is sophisticated and tight beyond what we could have dreamed of even a decade ago, let alone the 80’s. Check out this link a friend of mine sent me just a few days ago: Gaming Then and Now.

And it’s not just games… Watch an old movie, or some VHS-captured news story of the day, and the difference is astonishing. Fox News is a great example — computer generated art and text boxes flying everywhere on the screen, to the point that the news caster is only a small part of the presentation. And look at Microsoft Windows Vista … amazing packaging. All these things give me that Minority Report computer interface impression — the one they’ve been struggling to portray on the Sci Fi channel for years, and now it’s getting to the point where we’re in it every day.

And we haven’t even mentioned the idea that 9 year olds are carrying around cell phones, and I can watch my TV on my PDA, and my homepage is Google (where you can ask the all-powerful Star Trek-like computer in the sky whatever your heart desires, and it just tells you the answer), and we’re building our first space station, and … and … and … Gene Rodenberry would be proud.

So, where’s this all heading? From quantum physics to space elevators to virtual reality, I have to say I’m pretty intriqued. I also have to say that I wonder what the Sci-Fi channel’s going to do to keep making fiction, when every day Star Trek is closer to science FACT.  Potential blog entries abound; I’m sure I’ll get to that.  I already spewed my thoughts on geopolitics and their affect on technology here.

But in the meantime…  I said it in 1986, and I’m saying it now … great time to be alive!

Posted in Science, Engineering and Technology | 1 Comment

Tear Down the Cell Towers?

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Jeff Block

It goes without saying that all of us would love to never again hear the phrase “Can you hear me now?” coming from our cell phone. Well, here’s one out of left field…

(Stick with me; I promise your head won’t explode!)

Quantum Physics is a somewhat revolution branch of physics that’s been around since the days of Albert Einstein (early 20th century), but only in the last 10-15 years has it gotten really exciting in a way we gadget types might actually care about. Putting aside the various theories about quantum teleportation and duplicated universes, let’s focus on something that truly would “raise the bar” in the communication world – quantum communication.

So, you may or may not know that the protons, neutrons and electrons in the atom aren’t actually the smallest things going. Turns out that these too can be broken down into even smaller pieces called “quarks”. The study of quarks is what we science geeks call “Quantum Physics”.

One of the most interesting aspects of quarks is that they always come in pairs and have what we call “spin”. In every pair, one spins up and one spins down – no matter what. So, if I cause one to flip over, the other one flips over too, so as to maintain this rule of opposite spin.

So what, you ask? Well, the cool part is that quark #2 does the flipping over instantaneously, completely independently of how far apart the two are. So, if one were on Jupiter and the other in downtown L.A., and I flip one (let’s leave “how” to flip these things for another day, okay?) then the other flips two. Period. Somehow, these little puppies are connected on some hyper-dimensional level – like the 6th or 7th dimension or something completely defying all that Newtonian nothing-goes-faster-than-the-speed-of-light goofiness.

Peek your interest yet? If not, think about what you could do with something that has two states – up and down. Sounds an awful lot like the two states computers love so much – zero and one. Slap a bunch of these things next to each other, and you end up with a data stream much like the one your cellular phone uses to communicate with its cell tower of choice (at least most of the time).

The practical application of this somewhat trivial-sounding piece of physics: the ultimate cell phone. Take pairs of quarks – like 128 pairs, so as to end up with a 128-bit data stream. Separate them at birth (so to speak), so you’ve got 128 quarks spinning up and the other 128 spinning down. Put the first group in a nifty little microchip in your cell phone, and the other group in a similarly-nifty little microchip in the CO of your favorite phone company. Now, when you talk, your cell phone does the magic of converting the sound of your voice to a 128-bit signal (much like it does now), but instead of sending radio waves containing that signal to the nearest cell phone tower, it flips the corresponding bits (quarks) at the phone company.

And presto! You now have the ultimate cell phone. No radio wave to be interfered with or intercepted. No lost signals. No security issues. No traceability. No being out of range.  No dropped calls.  Because basically, there’s no signal — as current physics defines it. Just quarks doing what they do best – flipping spins. Essentially, the matter in the chip in your cell phone and the matter in the chip at the phone company are the same, so they always know what each other are up to – no need to send some signal between them.  Extra-dimensional communication at work.

Now, we won’t be seeing this level of use of quantum technology next week or anything, but here’s hoping our kids will someday be able to take a wrecking ball to our friends the cell towers, and “Can you hear me now?” will be permanently shelved with “Where’s the beef?”

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Posted in Science, Engineering and Technology | 4 Comments

Bring Back the Draft?

Posted on August 14, 2006 by Jeff Block

Here’s something different…

I can’t say I think a lot about reinstating the draft in the US.  My opinions on the subject aren’t very strong ones, nor have I thought them through very thoroughly.  But I’ll give my opinion quickly, then stand back and let Brad Bull comment on his opinion, since it came up in a conversation around another post.

I don’t think we should reinstate the draft.  I like the all-volunteer army.  If it becomes compulsory, doesn’t that degrade the moral and motivation of the troops … by definition?  And if people don’t want to be there (not that it’s a picnic to be there now, but this would make it worse), wouldn’t that make soldiers harder to train, less professional, more prone to deserting, etc?

Okay, Brad, take it away … what do you think?

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Posted in Military | 8 Comments

Out with Personal Responsibility, In with One World Government?

Posted on August 12, 2006 by Jeff Block

I think very few people would argue that one of America’s chief social tenants of late has become the abdication of personal responsibility.  It’s not my fault!  When you combine this with greed (which always comes from having a lot, which we all do — comparatively) and with the belief that the world owes me what I want (thank you social safety net and other liberal ideas), then add a healthy dose of consumerism, you get a fairly lethal cocktail.  The more people that drink this Kool-aid, the faster “It’s not my fault” becomes “It’s your fault, and I’m going to sue you for it.”

And this phenomenon isn’t limited to your kid tripping on my hose and breaking his arm.  It’s everywhere.  Even in government.  As the world’s gotten smaller (which I talked about yesterday) and the philosophy of I’m-not-responsible has taken root, an interesting change has been made possible for the traditional institutions of government.

At the local level, it’s the county’s or the state’s problem.  At the state level, it’s a federal problem.  At the federal level, the supreme court seems to be involved in every law that’s been passed in the last 5 years.  It seems like nobody wants to be the guy.  It’s always somebody else.  How many times during the Hurricane Katrina tragedy did you here the mayor say it was the governor’s problem or the governor say that it was Bush’s fault.  Some of that is politics, sure, but some of it is the need to blame someone else.  Who in that entire picture stood up and said, “I did this this and this wrong.  I’m sorry.  I’ve learned from my mistakes.” ?  Not many.  And this is just one (really good) example.

Something I’ve been hearing a lot more of lately than I used to is the term “International Law”.  All over the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, all over the Iraq debacle, all over the accusations of torture and military misconduct we’ve had to endure lately, and even in some supreme court debate.  All of a sudden now, members of the judiciary in America seem to think it’s a good idea to cite International Law in their decision making.  The constitution’s no longer good enough.  Let’s see what France or Russia had to say about … whatever.

And that’s laying the groundwork.  As more and more people are less and less able to say, “I’m the man.  The buck stops with me.” then the “buck” will naturally get thrown over the wall to some larger body of government to “be the man”.  Eventually, you get things like the EU.  Seemed like a good idea at the time … I guess … to some.  Solve our internal problems with more centralized government.  Make things easier.  Have them give me stuff.  Blah blah blah.  But in the end, I can just rely on someone else to make it happen for me.  Ought to sound pretty familiar, ’cause it’s the same thing in America for a lot of people.  “We can’t do it ourselves.”  “It’s the government’s responsibility to save me from all the bad things in the world.”  “The government owes me retirement … and welfare … and health care … and education … and … and … and ….”  We need help … all the time … for everything.  It’s constant.  Sometimes it seems like all I here anymore.  SUCK IT UP!  I get so tired of hearing how people don’t have enough opportunity.  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times… “Dude, this is America.  If you can’t get it together here, then there’s no place on earth you can get it together.”

But if people won’t take responsibility for themselves … If everyone’s tendency is to throw it over the wall to whoever will catch it … Then one of these days even our national sovereignty will be out the window.  And there are some that actively want that.  Look at the southern border.  “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”  Look at the debate over Guantanamo Bay.  “Every person on earth should be protected by the American constitution and given a lawyer in our civilian courts.”  Give me a break!

It’s all connected.  These are all symptoms of the line of thinking that Big Brother has to take care of me.  I need government to do for me what I can’t possibly do for myself.  And on this path, it won’t be that many years before we’re spending Ameros (the currency of the North American Union), competing in the olympics against against the United States of Africa, relying on the United Nations for everything (good luck with that), and getting an upclose and personal look at the debate over which horn will grow up to devour the other ten.

So let’s take a step back here.  We don’t need the government to do nearly as much for us as it does.  Certainly not more than it does.  It’s not someone else’s responsibilty to educate my kids.  The TV is a lousy babysitter and an even worse philosopher.  It’s probably not the teacher’s problem when little Johnny gets detention.  If little Suzie trips on your hose, then she should be more careful.  It’s not always racism.  You won’t be happy if you just had one more raise.  And you don’t need anybody to give you stuff.  If we get a little perspective and a lot more backbone back in our lives, then we can do without yet another layer of (International) government.  Because I’m just not ready yet for a personal tour through the book of Daniel.

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Posted in News, Politics and Culture | 8 Comments

Globalization Here We Come

Posted on August 11, 2006 by Jeff Block

By popular demand, I thought I’d share my thoughts on where the economy is going with regard to the topic of globalization.  Here’s my thinking…

First of all, what is it?  I think it’s plain to see that the world is shrinking.  As technology (the TV, the Internet, nifty fast airplanes, 24-hour news cycle, etc) makes the world smaller and smaller, economies cease to be trapped behind national borders.  In my opinion, when the TV was invented, the global economy was born.  When the Internet came about, the global economy hit adolescence.  And in my lifetime, we’ll probably see the full-fledged maturation of the thing.

Here’s the scenario that I think helps people understand what’s happening.  200 years ago, economies were all local.  Almost everyone born in town was either a local farmer or some sort of aristocrat, who made slaves of the local farmer.  (Oversimplified, but you get the idea.)  Just about everything in the economy centered around producing something on one end of town, shipping across town to be sold to someone who also lived in town, so that they could buy something (in town) made by someone else in town.  A local economy.  Money just moved around in circles (for the most part) within a 20-mile-radius circle.

Then came the industrial revolution, and with it the technology to expand the economy to a national level.  Now, I could produce and consume, buy and sell stuff that was made 1000 miles away on the other side of the country.  But for the most part, the money circled around inside national borders the way it stayed in town decades earlier.

Today, all bets are off.  The borders are no longer the local village or the country of origin.  Instead, a company based in the US, started by an American, run by an Indian can produce something in a plant in China, have it distributed in Mexico, where it can be bought by an Italian.  There just aren’t any borders anymore, where stuff is concerned.

So what?  Well, this means that the natural tendency capitalism has to seek out the cheapest labor and drive down prices is amplified.  During the industrial revolution, manufacturing visionaries realized that they could have the same widget built in Ohio instead of New York, and do it for half the cost.  They could then keep the price of the widget being sold in New York City relatively steady for a really long time (despite inflation in other economic areas), and make the same if not a significantly greater profit.  So is it today.  If a business owner has the technology and the access and the funds to move their operation overseas to someplace like India or China, and build stuff cheaper, then they’re going to do so.

And the effect is the same.  Inflation is held in check, and profits go up.  Not only that, but the poor people of India or China who once could only farm rice (and starve to death doing so) can now make a LOT more money making widgets … even though the company hiring them is paying them peanuts compared to America’s (comparatively wealthy) standard of living.  So, everyone’s happy, right?

Wrong!  The rub is that the plant that just got built in Mexico or China wasn’t a new plant.  The plant was moved to China or India from Ohio or North Carolina.  Same with the accounting or IT jobs that are going to India.  Or, whatever profession you pick.  So, where Americans once did a job for $25/hr, someone else somewhere else will do the same job (but not at the same quality level — we’ll get to that in a sec) for $5/day.  Now, I’m no longer just cutting costs in half, I’m decreasing them by 90% — and that’s even after the cost of running a business from across an ocean is taken into account (these costs are significant, even with all our technology).

So, a whole bunch of things happen… 

  1. Goods and services are made much more affordable.  Now poorer people, even in some third-world countries, can afford a refrigerator or microwave or television.
  2. Inflation is managed (in the consuming country).  The cost of the goods and services that have been globalized can get low and stay low for a much longer period of time (as long as the business leaders aren’t too greedy.)  So, the price of TV’s in America falls fast and stays low.  Similarly, the price of refrigerators doesn’t go up in America.
  3. Products get better.  Globalized products can be made so cheap, that new features can be added to them without jacking the price up beyond the reach of the “average consumer”.  That’s why we’re seeing TV’s built into refrigerators, toasters with operating systems, etc.  Because we can. 
  4. American CEO’s get richer.  There’s a lot more money to work with because operating costs are WAY down.
  5. A bunch of Americans are out of a job.  It becomes harder and harder to compete if you want 10x the pay someone else is willing to take for “the same job”.
  6. Deflationary pressure in the consuming country (such as America) becomes a real concern.
  7. Inflationary pressure in the producing country (such as China or India) becomes a real concern.

Let’s spend a little time on these last two…

Deflation Over Here

Seems like a great idea to have stuff get cheaper.  Problem is that the people losing their job in North Carolina to former-agriculture workers in China can’t compete any longer.  If they want to entertain the slightest hope of getting a job, they have to lower their salary expectations.  Instead of working for $25-30 an hour, it’s $20-25 … then $15-20 … then they have to change jobs to get back up to $20/hr.  Then that job goes away too.  Then they settle for $15 for a while, until they change again, then that job goes away too.  Vicious cycle.  And if the cycle gets too broad, deflation occurs.  The prices of goods and services, accompanied by wages, could spiral downward out of control until equilibrium was reached.  In other words — until our standard / cost of living had dropped to the level of China and India.

Inflation Over There

The price of a loaf of bread is doubling in India and China every couple years.  Why?  Because wages are increasing.  Why?  Because people know they can get more money out of the American or European companies.  Paying some guy $7/day vs. $5/day is no big deal when the closest domestic competitor wants $30/HOUR.  But that’s huge for the guy in the suburbs of Beijing.  If you visit Bangalore, you’ll see 30-story glass skyscrapers on dirt roads with donkeys tied up outside on which the employees of that company rode to work. 

And the net effect … bye-bye middle class.  Either you work in that glass building or you don’t.  Not to mention the stress that trying to build the infrastructure necessary to support all this is putting on their economies.  You can’t heat an economy up to white-hot levels (China’s GDP is growing at like 9% a year — double, even triple the growth rate of the US economy) without expecting some serious inflation.

Where’s it all going?

Well, first of all, we’re looking at the beginning of outsourcing, not the end.  Unless something like government regulations interfere (which I don’t want, btw), the globalization will occur until equilibrium is reached.  If America’s economy is strong enough to keep moving forward even under this downward pressure, then awesome.  But it’s much more likely that we’ll experience deflation and developing nations like China will experience inflation until we get close enough to each other that it is no longer advantageous for companies to move manufacturing (etc) overseas.  But even if China and India catch up, there’s still Eastern Europe and Africa and South America.  Basically, all else being equal, the jobs will go where the labor is cheapest, with almost no regard for national boundaries.

What about the quality thing?

Brief aside…  There’s another bottom-line reality to consider.  The work done in developing nations — in places like China and India — just isn’t of the same level of quality as the work done in Japan or Germany or Ohio or N. Carolina.  It’s just a fact.  The stuff sold in Wal-Mart looks nice, but is poor quality — breaks easily, has a short life-span, etc.  Software written in India takes longer to write and is riddled with holes.  Etc.  So, this has an impact on how wide the gap has to be between the cost of creating something in China and the cost of making it here.

As long as software can be written 10x cheaper in India, it will be.  But when it’s only 3x cheaper, that won’t be enough to justify the headache of staying up all night on conference calls and delivery buggy crap to the customer instead of a quality product.  This means that the equilibrium I mentioned isn’t really parity; it’s when the two standards of living get close enough to each other that people can no longer justify the nuisance.  Good news for us, because that means we have less distance to fall.  It also means that a quality product is still worth something — and quality is what Americans (at least those of us still acting like Americans) are really good at.

What should we do about all this?

The secrets to weathering this storm in the US are preparation and education.

First of all, if you live like the average American household — 95% of your home leveraged, $10k per person on credit cards, 2 car payments, school loans and 3 pieces of furniture on buy-now-pay-later plans — then this (globalization) is going to utterly screw you.  Living on this level of margin is like living on the razor edge of a knife.  One lost paycheck, one salary cut, one mortgage rate increase, one severe illness / accident, one lawsuit, one wrong move — and you can no longer survive the downward drag of all that debt.  You can’t handle any deviation from the norm when you’re living under these pressures.  And if more and more people lose their jobs and fewer and fewer people can compete at their current lifestyle, then things will get bad fast in this country.

Secondly, education.  The answer is to begin to produce new things that can’t be outsourced.  Don’t flip the burgers; learn how to fix the robots that are going to flip them in 10 years.  Don’t sweep the floors; invent something that needs a store room that other people need to sweep.  Don’t know a programming language; become a software analyst / consultant whose services the customer can’t live without.  And for God’s sake, let’s get some new technology invented.

I don’t just want Hydrogen cars for the sake of the economy or to get us off oil.  I want them, so that China has to buy them FROM US.  I realize that those plants will soon be moved to Mexico and China as well, but not immediately.  At first, it’ll be too hard.  Too few will know how to do it.  Too many trade secrets will be involved.  At least for a while, we’re still in the phase where the only stuff that gets outsourced is the stuff that’s commoditized.  And even as the pace of the move from new (so it has to be done here) to got-it-down (so it can be shipped to Slovakia) increases, that just means we have to innovate faster.  We’re not doing this in America any more (another topic for another time), and that’ll prove to be our downfall.

Okay, that’s it for me.  What do you think?

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Posted in Business and Finance, Science, Engineering and Technology | Tagged | 7 Comments

Taxes … Ah, Taxes ….

Posted on August 9, 2006 by Jeff Block

This’ll be fun…

So let’s talk taxes.  Discussions about economics always seem to lead to discussions about taxes, which in itself says something.  Seems like taxes should be “invisible” — in that people don’t really spend too much time dwelling on them.  Even though people will never be *happy* about paying taxes, it seems just about everyone thinks the tax code is royally screwing them (or people they know).  Of course, money in general carries with it the power to make everyone inherently dissatisfied (especially in our consumer culture).  Just about everyone, no matter how much they have, always wants more, because no amount of money can ever be enough.  Contentment does not come from what you have, it’s an inside thing.

All that being said, a number of comments have been posted to the blog on the topic of taxes.  I thought I’d share my vision on taxes with the world, and see what kind of (lively) responses I get.

  1. If the tax code cannot be written on the front and back of a single 8.5×11 sheet of paper, then it’s too long and should be rewritten.  The concept that entire industries and shelf fulls of software packages exist just to help the average American navigate the tax code is beyond ridiculous through commical to just plain sad.
  2. Here’s what I’d put on the 8.5×11… 
    1. Income tax is far more flat.  Two buckets.  A poverty line is developed and adjusted for inflation every year.  Income below that line means that I pay NO income tax.  Above that line, I pay a fixed percentage of my income to the government, similar to the way we do now.  Three variables — the poverty line, the poverty line adjustment rate, and the income tax percentage.  Say maybe $20k/yr, 3% and 20%.  Thus people are much more fairly taxed on what they earn.
    2. Sales tax is federalized and works just like income tax.  Below the poverty line, you are treated like a non-profit organization — you have the card in hand, so you pay no sales tax.  Everyone else pays a fixed (probably much higher than today) sales tax.  Say maybe 20% as well.  Thus people are now taxed on what they spend, moreso than what they make.  You aren’t penalized nearly as much for success, and “poor” people are exempt from taxes.  Obviously the rub is for the guy making $21k/yr, but there will *ALWAYS* be some kind of line(s) at which things get hard.  Adding 50,000 pages of tax code hasn’t made that go away, and I submit adding exceptions and exemptions and rebates and more tiers, etc never will.  A fixed PERCENTAGE is fair.
    3. Property tax stays in play, as do corporate taxes.  Can’t get around it as much as I hate it.  One change here, though, is that I’d make it illegal for cities to bargain tax breaks with businesses to get them into town.  That just royally screws the home owners; no way around it.  Those businesses have an obligation to fund local infrastructure, such as schools, etc.
    4. I’m far less familiar with business tax code, so I can speak less to it.  However, a couple things that I would do…  This code should be dramatically simplified as well, hopefully similar to above.  In addition, above a certain threshold of “harmfulness” (which I think should be determined by referendum — pure democratic vote — at the federal level, so that the concept can’t be hijacked by career politicians), I would have businesses pay extra taxes if they produce products harmful to the community.  Smoking, drinking, gambling, porn, etc would have heavy taxes leveled against it, then these “vice revenues” would be used to fund schools, local assistance programs, community development programs, shelters, etc.  It’s the least these companies (and the people who buy these products to make the companies viable) can do to help society deal with the crap they’re spewing out.
    5. No estate tax … at all.  It’s totally unfair.  Pretty fascist actually.  I’m no fan of 2nd generation wealth, but that doesn’t give the government the right to come take half of what I’m trying to leave my children when I die.  It’s grave robbing.  And on top of that, this is the stuff I’ve managed to accumulate AFTER I paid taxes all my life.  It’s taxing my income and all my stuff AGAIN.  It’s just wrong, and we need to learn how to live without it.  I just don’t believe in punishing people (actually, it’s not even them, it’s their children) for accumulating.  Under the old estate tax laws (before Bush raised the limits), my father’s (blue collar worker all his life — two jobs for most of it) farm would have to be liquidated to cover the tax burden of his death.  So, his prize possession — dreamed about since he was a kid, works on every day, loves — my brother and I would have to sell it to cover the estate tax.  How is that right?
  3. So, state tax would be transparent, in that we’d just pay it and not have to file anything to the state.  Property and business tax processes would continue similar to today.  Federal tax would be payed on a website once a year, maybe once a quarter, and take an hour at most.  The IRS should have about 25 employees, instead 115,000 (what it has today).  If you figures these folks make $10/hr (ha!), then that’s a savings of $1M / hr (or $2.4B/yr) right off the top.

What would happen under the Jeff plan?

  • Start with the easy stuff.  The IRS.  The actual IRS budget for FY 2005was $10.7B.  We could stop throwing most of that money away.  Yes, we have the fallout from these folks no longer having a job, but they could compete in the private sector then.  Better for everyone.  Maybe we even take the first year’s $11B savings, and devote it to helping them change careers.  That’d be the least we could do for them.  Also fallout from tax accountants having their industry go up in smoke, but it seems like they could be other kinds of accountants, actuaries, etc.  No doubt there’d be an over-supply of math nerds quick, which would have some negative impact.  But I think worth it.
  • What about federal tax revenues?  Federal tax revenue for 2005 was $2.15T (that’s with 12 zeros).  If we go to more of a flat model, what would happen?  Let’s use my $20k (pretty close to the actual number of $18,244, but let’s keep it round and simple) and 20% numbers above.  The average American household makes about $45k.  About 13% of the nation is “poor”.  The number of households in the US is about 110M.  So, it’s just math from there.  14.3M households are poor, and pay nothing.  The other 95.7M pay 20% of their average income of $45k.  Total federal tax revenue = $4.3T dollars — more than double what we brought in last year under our 66,498 page tax code.  If 2005, the average tax burden per household was $20k.  Under my plan, the average tax burden per household is $9,000 (20% of the $45k average income).
  • What about state taxes?  Well, considering that NOBODY pays anywhere close to 20%, I think it’s safe to say revenues would be through the roof there (without my taking the time to spell it out).  So, of course my vote would to be dramatically lower the 20% INCOME rate, and put more of the burden on the sales tax side of things.  If you combine this with cutting our spending by 25% (which I would absolutely make part of my “comprehensive” approach to taxes), I don’t see why we couldn’t all pay less and have far more money available to the government with far less complexity and a far more fair system.

Guess that’s it (until I think of something else).  Either way, I’ve gotta get to real work.  What do you think?

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