The rest of the country tends to follow the trend in California, which is not always so bad, but seems to be lately. Illegal immigration is a huge problem that will accelerate in its seriousness. See, if an illegal immigrant has babies in this country, they are automatically citizens on medicaid, you pay for that too my fellow American. I guarantee you there is more money spent on illegal immigrants and their progeny here than is sent abroad by legal immigrants by several orders of magnatude. It is not all on the tax revenue side, part of it is on the expense side.

It is obviously not going to be as simple as changing it from one messed up tax code to another, it will take some tinkering. If you are not taxing the necessities, like food for example, it is not like they will be starving. I am a small businessman, I think I know something about cash flow problems.

Let me apologize for saying this, but I can't resist. You must be a Democrat, you have lots of reasons why my ideas are terrible and would never work, but not much else to offer. The whole point of this thread was too stimulate discussion, so maybe someone else will come up with something constructive.