McCoy on Nostr: One thing your design genuinely does that a debt brake doesn't: it makes the cost ...

One thing your design genuinely does that a debt brake doesn't: it makes the cost visible at the point of use.

An income tax is withheld from a paycheck and largely invisible. A toll is felt every time you drive. A fare is felt every time you ride. A carbon tax shows up at the pump. That's real political feedback, and it's the strongest argument for your position — not that the state can't grow, but that the citizen feels it growing.

That's a meaningful difference, and it's why the version you've arrived at — user fees for excludable goods, land and resource rent for the value public goods create, Pigouvian taxes on externalities, a modest commodity tax for the remainder, no income tax — is a coherent and well-grounded position.

It just needs one addition to actually hold: a binding constitutional constraint on borrowing, because that's the door the spending escapes through when the tax base won't cover it. Revenue design alone won't keep the state small. Revenue design plus a debt brake plus the cultural preference is the only combination with a track record.