Expectations among conservatives and libertarians have soared with the advent of DOGE. The Western Journal referenced an old Uncommon Knowledge interview with Milton Friedman from Feb 10, 1999 (Has Peter been doing these interviews for over a quarter of a century?  Indeed he has.) wherein Friedman produces a long list of federal departments that should be eliminated (way more than half–almost everything except State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury. The list is long. And still valid. Except that now there are even more departments that should be abolished). It would seem that Milei listened to that interview long ago and applied it in Argentina. Would that we could do that here.

Veronique de Rugy presented a great rundown on how to restructure the federal tax system, in the direction of a flatter tax that is more consumption-oriented with lower rates. ( I confess, she is my favorite public libertarian economist). She is excited.  She is always enthusiastic about libertarian possibilities. But now she is almost unable to contain herself. Good for her. And I hope Elon and Vivek are listening to her.

And Dr. Bastiat is fully expecting big-time spending cuts, as he notes that they are much more important than tax cuts. And perhaps deregulation. But I want it all.

One would hope that the outcome will be more satisfying than that of Dickens’ novel.

Alas, government efficiency is an oxymoron. And, usually, that is a good thing. When government gets efficient, citizens are usually in danger.  The wisdom of Madison was to bollix up government so thoroughly with checks and balances that its threat to citizens and freedom could be controlled and limited. The Nazis ran the trains on time, but the destination was all too often the gas chamber. Imagine if government became so good at enforcing regulations that the EPA succeeded in achieving net zero carbon emissions. We would be doomed. And if we weren’t, the EPA would likely manage to get not only CO2 categorized as a pollutant; it would likely also get water vapor (the most important greenhouse gas, we are told) listed as a pollutant. Then the agency would embark on the task of preventing rain from falling on either the just or the unjust. The most efficient that government has been recently is in enforcing COVID restrictions, which caused untold damage to the nation and the world.

(As an aside, I would offer a unifying hypothesis regarding the motivation behind my suspicion that China and the US collaborated on developing COVID:  Both governments believe the human population needs to be culled, and COVID was a means with potentially plausible deniability built-in of accomplishing that culling. I’m sure both governments were disappointed in the limited lethality of the virus, and had hoped that it had been more effective. Further, the mRNA vaccines held the potential of aiding that culling, possibly even of impairing fertility to exponentially expand the effort at limiting the human population, which, of course, is the greatest threat to the planet.)

So, we have to be careful what we hope for.

The Milton Friedman approach is the most effective. End Departments wholesale. Leviathan has become so gargantuan as to be almost unfathomable in its dimensions to mere mortals, and AI is completely insufficient to limit it. Cutting the government, like extracting blubber from a whale, is the most necessary approach. Of course, with so many with such vested interests in the existence of an almost infinitely bloated federal government, and both parties loathe make necessary cuts, how can such a thing be accomplished?

Let me make a suggestion. In fact, let me suggest that there is one thing more necessary than anything else. That essential One Thing that Curly (Jack Palance) emphasizes to Mitch (Billy Crystal) in City Slickers, perhaps?

End the IRS. Repeal the 16th Amendment. I claim that that abominable Amendment is the root of our present morass. That is not just cutting taxes, which can be raised again by a Democrat administration, as has happened repeatedly in the last 111 years. It is eliminating the current tax system altogether.

But, but, but, you can’t do that, you say. How would we pay our federal bills?  In the original Constitutional fashion, which has previously never been done. Levy a capitated tax on states rather than a direct tax on individuals. Whatever fol-de-rol has gone on with politicians trying to obfuscate the meaning of “direct tax” (most recently by Brett Kavanaugh in his abominable decision in Moore), a federal income tax is a direct tax on citizens. That was banned in the original Constitution.

However, an indirect tax on states based on the number of citizens was specified in the Constitution. Of course, such a system was never implemented. Take the federal budget, and divide by the total number of citizens, whereupon you obtain a per-citizen value for the federal budget. Then multiply that amount by the number of citizens in a state, and you have that state’s share of the federal tax burden. Each state can then decide how it wants to collect that amount from its citizens, who would then pay taxes to the state only. Not to the federal government at all. Hence there would be a buffer of the state between the citizen and the federal government. That was the whole premise of a federalist system, one that no longer exists in America. In a nation wherein citizens are dunned directly by the central government, which then distributes funds to the states, the states become vassals rather than sovereign states. The whole idea of federalism is gone. Kaput. Destroyed. Eliminated. Buried. Dismantled. Eradicated. We have no federal system and have not had one for over a hundred years.

Veronique de Rugy laments that Congress never seems to have the will to make the changes in the tax code she recommends (which are excellent). The reason Congress doesn’t seem to have the will is that it doesn’t have to. There is no competing system adjacent that is more desirable. If the system I recommend were in place, each state would have an incentive to optimize its tax system to the benefit of its citizens, and with different states having different systems, advantages would emerge. Just as they are now, as many states flatten and lower their income tax rates or eliminate income tax altogether. There would be competing tax regimes that would show where the benefit lies. Right now, with a single central system, there is no possibility that improvements will be made on a sustained basis in that national tax system.

If states had to pay taxes to the federal government based on population, the incentive of each would be to improve the per capita income of its citizens to make the tax burden easier to bear. Rather than inviting illegals into sanctuary states to capture more funds from the federal government, and to increase population to enhance political power with additional congressional seats. And states would have a far greater interest in influencing the federal budget. They would likely instruct their senators and representatives on tax matters far more carefully. Returning to a legislative election of senators would enhance that process further. There would be far greater control from the states on the federal fisk. The federal tail would not be wagging the dog as readily as now.

Currently, there is no limiting principle on federal taxation. Anything that can get through Congress that extracts money directly from citizens, including taxation of unrealized gains, is permitted. It is only a question of time before more and more onerous taxes, including taxation of unrealized gains, are imposed, so insatiable is the federal leviathan. We are the plankton and krill to Leviathan’s baleen. It is necessary to return to a system that has a limit on federal taxation. The original system envisioned by the Founders is the most reasonable and effective system that could sustain a federalist system. Our current system feeds a federal monster of unlimited taxation and spending (and regulation) that creates a central government more powerful than anything Bismarck established; his efforts paved the wave for the Third Reich in the following century, and so will be our end if we persist in our centralized system of increasing central power.

No libertarian economist even considers these ideas. No one analyzes them. There is no interest. Why is that? I say this is thinking big. (I am sure everyone else thinks I am overdosing on hallucinogens.) Where is Russ Roberts, or Donald Boudreaux, or Kling, or Selgin, or Phil Gramm for that matter? Where is Mark Skousen? . Where is Tyler Cowan or Alex Tabbarok? Or Steve Forbes? Or Stephen Moore? Or Larry Kudlow?  I would challenge any of these, and all of their fellow economists, to consider such a system. Just like a few (Selgin and others) consider Free Banking.  What is the matter with libertarian economists? Or commentators generally? Where is Charles C. W. Cooke?  He should be making amends for his misguided fellow Englishman, John Maynard Keynes (at least Keynes, a Socialist, helped establish the Gold Standard–along with the World Bank and the IMF–after WWII, with the help of that Communist spy from the Roosevelt White House, Harry Dexter White, at Bretton Woods–which of course was dismantled by “Conservative” Republican Richard Nixon under duress due to LBJ’s guns-and-butter blowout spending and inflationary policies).

So, I guess I’m a voice crying in the wilderness. None dare consider limiting federal taxation.

And where are Ricochetti? Peter? Rob? James? Steve? Lucretia? Yoo? Richard?

How about Ben Shapiro? Does he have any comments on such a proposal?

What is the matter with conservatives? What is the matter with libertarians?