1. Every year, the US Government figures out how much money it wants to spend.
2. Then, it figures out what the (flat) tax rate would need to be in order to rustle up that much money.
3. Then, it sets the tax rate and sends everyone a bill.
You could do this a year in advance just to make sure everybody knew how much they'd be getting taxed. But the important thing is that everybody in the country needs to see the immediate hip-pocket consequences when the government spends more money.
Still doesn't help with things like SS and Medicare, though, which cost a little bit of money in the year they're passed and vast sums of money several decades into the future.
Then a financial crisis hits and the government finds itself unable to react to the needs of a paralyzed market. It's a nice idea in principle. But any time something like this or a balanced budget law/rule comes up in congress, it never has a provision for reacting to emergencies.
The problem with that is, as we've seen (and are seeing), it's trivial to manufacture an 'emergency' or a 'crisis' on demand, whenever it's convenient.
A government that can react to real crises while being vulnerable to fake ones is the best option I've seen so far. People are very creative when it comes to working around problems. Some people see data processing efficiency as a problem to solve. Others see finding ways to manipulate government for profit as one.
You have to give him credit for the less-is-more approach to this answer, you summed up centuries of macroeconomics and people who dedicated their lives to finding the most optimal solutions in a very easy to follow <ol>, well done!
1. Every year, the US Government figures out how much money it wants to spend.
2. Then, it figures out what the (flat) tax rate would need to be in order to rustle up that much money.
3. Then, it sets the tax rate and sends everyone a bill.
You could do this a year in advance just to make sure everybody knew how much they'd be getting taxed. But the important thing is that everybody in the country needs to see the immediate hip-pocket consequences when the government spends more money.
Still doesn't help with things like SS and Medicare, though, which cost a little bit of money in the year they're passed and vast sums of money several decades into the future.