Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Third Way, a self-described "leading moderate think tank of the progressive movement," recently put out a plan for reducing the deficit, which included this embarrassingly obvious idea. Maybe taxpayers should get a breakdown, receipt-style, that explains where their money went each year.

Here's what one might look like:

Here's the rationale, as explained by David Kendall and Jim Kessler, the authors of the policy memo:

For many Americans, the amount they pay in taxes is larger than any purchase they make during the year, but studies show they know almost nothing about where that money goes to.

This contributes to ridiculous beliefs, like the view that 20% of government spending goes to foreign aid, for example. An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention addressing a host of economic and social problems.

This is a very, very good idea, and now that it's been suggested, it seems almost crazy we don't have something like it already.

One can already calculate this information pretty easily, of course. But providing it in the form of a receipt, upon payment of taxes, would really help people understand the government's expenses and how they relate to one's personal finances.

No taxation without information!

Fantastic idea..

Everybody wants a free pony, and there's no easier way to get votes if you're a politician than by buying them with pony promises. But you can't promise ponies to everybody at the same time because you'd run out of ponies, and no one would believe that you had so many ponies to hand out anyway. So each politician, or pony handerouter, picks a few groups and promises them ponies.

Of course, that just makes more people want ponies because if one guy gets a free pony then the next guy thinks it's only fair that he gets a free pony too. And the people who do get free ponies just want more free ponies because after you've finagled the first one for free, the finagling begins to feel a bit like being paid what you're owed. You're a good guy, right? If the world is handing out free ponies, why shouldn't you get yours?

Unfortunately, there aren't enough ponies. And ponies are never free. That's the reality. But politicians don't get elected easily by dealing in reality. They get elected easily by promising ponies.

Take Social Security for instance. The government said it would take ponies from everyone, breed the ponies, and then give everyone his ponies plus some extra ponies at retirement.

But politicians being politicians, they couldn't stand to see all those ponies sitting idle in the government stables when they could be trading those ponies for votes. So they opened the stables and traded all the ponies.

People got angry that all their ponies were gone, but the bureaucrats said, "Don't worry. We'll just take even MORE ponies from your children, and we'll give the ponies to you!" People like ponies so much that they thought this was a pretty good deal. "Surely our sweet children won't mind giving us all those ponies," they thought, "and besides, we don't have to ask them."

And so it went on.

But even that wasn't enough ponies for the politicians' pony trading appetites.

The Chinese politicians had plenty of ponies, and they didn't have any votes to trade them for. So the American politicians borrowed a few trillion ponies from the Chinese politicians and handed out the Chinese ponies to their American friends. The American politicians promised that American babies would grow up and work very hard to collect lots and lots of ponies to give back to the Chinese politicians.

You probably think that you can't sign contracts for ponies with the names of people not yet living. But you aren't a politician. The politician says, "Enslave the babies and the babies of the babies and the babies of the babies of the babies! Chinese ponies for everybody!" And he usually gets elected.

So what will future generations think as they toil and toil and toil to pay off our "free" ponies? "Yes, life is now very hard, but at least our ancestors had free ponies." Is that what they will think?

I doubt it. 

I think we all know they'll take us for horse thieves. I guess we're counting on not being around to suffer the traditional penalty for that. Too bad. Because if we keep going on as we are, we'll deserve it.

Funny how you can replace "ponies" with "money" and this sounds a little more absurd.. it probably shouldn't though.

I'd like to make you a business offer. Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can't turn me down, as you'll come to understand in a moment...

Here's the deal. You're going to start a business or expand the one you've got now. It doesn't really matter what you do or what you're going to do. I'll partner with you no matter what business you're in – as long as it's legal. But I can't give you any capital – you have to come up with that on your own. I won't give you any labor – that's definitely up to you.

What I will do, however, is demand you follow all sorts of rules about what products and services you can offer, how much (and how often) you pay your employees, and where and when you're allowed to operate your business. That's my role in the affair: to tell you what to do.

In return for my rules, I'm going to take roughly half of whatever you make in the business, each year.

Half seems fair, doesn't it? I think so. Of course, that's half of your profits. You're also going to have to pay me about 12% of whatever you decide to pay your employees because you've got to cover my expenses for promulgating all of the rules about who you can employ, when, where, and how. Come on, you're my partner. It's only "fair."

Now... after you've put your hard-earned savings at risk to start this business and after you've worked hard at it for a few decades (paying me my 50% or a bit more along the way each year), you might decide you'd like to cash out – to finally live the good life.

Whether or not this is "fair" – some people never can afford to retire – is a different argument. As your partner, I'm happy for you to sell whenever you'd like... because our agreement says, if you sell, you have to pay me an additional 20% of whatever the capitalized value of the business is at that time.

I know... I know... you put up all the original capital. You took all the risks. You put in all of the labor. That's all true. But I've done my part, too. I've collected 50% of the profits each year. And I've always come up with more rules for you to follow each year. Therefore, I deserve another, final, 20% slice of the business. Oh... and one more thing...

Even after you've sold the business and paid all of my fees... I'd recommend buying lots of life insurance.

You see, even after you've been retired for years, when you die, you'll have to pay me 50% of whatever your estate is worth. After all, I've got lots of partners and not all of them are as successful as you and your family. We don't think it's "fair" for your kids to have such a big advantage. But if you buy enough life insurance, you can finance this expense for your children.

All in all, if you're a very successful entrepreneur... if you're one of the rare, lucky, and hard-working people who can create a new company, employ lots of people, and satisfy the public... you'll end up paying me more than 75% of your income over your life. Thanks so much.

I'm sure you'll think my offer is reasonable and happily partner with me... but it doesn't really matter how you feel about it because if you ever try to stiff me – or cheat me on any of my fees or rules – I'll break down your door in the middle of the night, threaten you and your family with heavy, automatic weapons, and throw you in jail.

That's how civil society is supposed to work, right? This is Amerika, isn't it?

That's the offer Amerika gives its entrepreneurs. And the idiots in Washington wonder why there are no new jobs.

This article completely discounts the legal protections the U.S. government offers entrepreneurs in this country, but it does highlight how expensive that exchange has become for businesses.

As an American, I am embarrassed that the U.S. House of Representatives has 220 members who actually believe the government can successfully centrally plan the medical and insurance industries.

I'm embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.

It's a triumph of mindless wishful thinking over logic and experience.

The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by "experts" means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.

Government cannot do simple things efficiently. The bureaucrats struggle to count votes correctly. They give subsidized loans to "homeowners" who turn out to be 4-year-olds. Yet congressmen want government to manage our medicine and insurance.

Competition is a "discovery procedure," Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek taught. Through the competitive market process, we producers and consumers constantly learn things that force us to adjust our behavior if we are to succeed. Central planners fail for two reasons:

First, knowledge about supply, demand, individual preferences and resource availability is scattered -- much of it never articulated -- throughout society. It is not concentrated in a database where a group of planners can access it.

Second, this "data" is dynamic: It changes without notice.

No matter how honorable the central planners' intentions, they will fail because they cannot know the needs and wishes of 300 million different people. And if they somehow did know their needs, they wouldn't know them tomorrow.

Proponents of so-called reform -- it's not really reform unless it makes things better -- have shamefully avoided criticism of their proposals. Often they just dismiss their opponents as greedy corporate apologists or paranoid right-wing loonies. That's easier than answering questions like these:

1) How can the government subsidize the purchase of medical services without driving up prices? Econ 101 teaches -- without controversy -- that when demand goes up, if other things remain equal, price goes up. The politicians want to have their cake and eat it, too.

2) How can the government promise lower medical costs without restricting choices? Medicare already does that. Once the planners' mandatory insurance pushes prices to new heights, they must put even tougher limits on what we may buy -- or their budget will be even deeper in the red than it already is. As economist Thomas Sowell points out, government cannot really reduce costs. All it can do is disguise and shift costs (through taxation) and refuse to pay for some services (rationing).

3) How does government "create choice" by imposing uniformity on insurers? Uniformity limits choice. Under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill and the Senate versions, government would dictate to all insurers what their "minimum" coverage policy must include. Truly basic high-deductible, low-cost catastrophic policies tailored to individual needs would be forbidden.

4) How does it "create choice" by making insurance companies compete against a privileged government-sponsored program? The so-called government option, let's call it Fannie Med, would have implicit government backing and therefore little market discipline. The resulting environment of conformity and government power is not what I mean by choice and competition. Rep. Barney Frank is at least honest enough to say that the public option will bring us a government monopoly.

Advocates of government control want you to believe that the serious shortcomings of our medical and insurance system are failures of the free market. But that's impossible because our market is not free. Each state operates a cozy medical and insurance cartel that restricts competition through licensing and keeps prices higher than they would be in a genuine free market. But the planners won't talk about that. After all, if government is the problem in the first place, how can they justify a government takeover?

Many people are priced out of the medical and insurance markets for one reason: the politicians' refusal to give up power. Allowing them to seize another 16 percent of the economy won't solve our problems.

Freedom will.

Right on.  Right on.