One of the things that never ceases to annoy me (escpecially around April 15th) is that our system for funding the government is so stuck on stupid. Seriously, any given community college in this country is more intelligently funded and managed than our Federal government. One of the vanguard policies of the Liberal Capitalist Party will be a complete modernization of the way our government funds itself.

The fact is, all of the income taxes and business taxes and excise taxes and ad valorem taxes etc. that we pay to the Federal government are disruptive in that they drive unemployment, deepen the whiplash produced by the business cycle, and drive firms to seek lower costs of doing business overseas. What's more, they are also completely unnecessary in the long term: there is no fiscal reason why the Federal government can't be eventually made completely self-funding via a National Trust. For that matter, there is no reason that states and localities can't do the same thing. The key to the whole thing is to reform taxes and entitlements together, creating a unified safety net from the unsustainable crazy-quilt patchwork of safety netlets we've concocted over the last sixty years or so, funded by consumption taxes mitigated for the poor and working classes.

That the Republicans and Democrats lack the leadership and creativity to pull this off is obvious; they are the ones responsible for the Rube Goldberg system we have now. Let's take matters into our own hands already.

yours/
peter.

Hey Mwyn,

Thanks for posting. i noticed when you registered but didn't notice your post until now; sorry about that.

Your idea posits a very interesting solution for the free rider problem that plagues and eventually dooms most collectivist endeavors, but it may also run afoul of the ideal of equal protection of the laws and runs the risk of being co-opted by elites. Now true, the danger of any state authority is that it could be co-opted by elites, but the question is rather how dangerous such power would be once the elite consolidated their grip on such power.

My personal view is that a modern political party shouldn't seek perfect, permanent "solutions" to contemporary problems of governance, but should instead strive to effect an organic process of continuous improvement with policies that allow such an evolution to occur. For such a program, the starting point is always the here and now, and not some imaginary "scratch" point. Whereas a poll tax system coupled with a token based "political economy" may very well prove to be the most intelligent next step for a future America that is much more wealthy and free than we are today, it may be too high a step up the ladder from where we currently find ourselves.

Still, a very interesting example of outside the box thinking, thanks for posting it. I would be very interested in reading any further elaboration you may have thought up as well.

yours/
peter.