Kerry,

You had to go and mention small business taxes. Now that my blood pressure is up, I'll sum this up for Michael: If you own your own business in the US, half of what you make, sometimes more, goes to the government. This puts me in a higher tax bracket than the CEO of IBM. Needless to say, I made a bit less than he did this year.

All taxes on capital gains from investments should be eliminated. The fact that we punish fiscal responsibility and financial success in this country (and others) is completely ludicrous. The estate tax is a particularly obscene incarnation of our broken tax code. The answer to this problem can be found here. In short, we switch to a consumption based system of taxation, eliminating the income tax and all taxes on investments and estates. Unfortunately, this concept has little chance of success, because it would take a great deal of power away from the very people that would have to vote it into law. We can dream though...

Kerry, you've also nailed the problems with our system of education. I am also a big fan of privatization. The singular problem that needs to be addressed is the fact that we require by law in this country a certain amount of education. I believe in this law, because without it we would just be creating more and more dependency over time. Since by law we require a certain amount of education for every citizen, there must be affordable education for low income families. I think there is a way to do this in free market system, but I have to research the details. I like the idea of vouchers under our current system; perhaps some version of that combined with abolishing the NEA could work.

Here's one more note regarding taxes. One of the things that keeps the entitlement spending going is the reference to the "poor" portion of our population. By the IRS's current system of measuring income, about 20% of the population qualifies as poor. Here are some of the flaws with that system: First, it doesn't take net worth into account. Someone who has a net worth of $10,000,000 that takes a year off and draws no salary is classified as poor. The system also has no way of tracking how transient people of low incomes are in regards to their income. Children of middle and upper class households working part time or summer jobs are classified as poor, but most of them move out of this category as soon as they enter the work force full time. If you look at the numbers over time, you realize that only 3% of the US population remains poor over an 8 year period. You won't be hearing this from the politicians any time soon, however. 20% just sounds so much more impressive. Bring on the entitlements!