I would go in exactly the opposite direction. Simplify taxes — and government — by shifting to a radically progressive flat tax on income, eliminate the payroll tax, and enact a fairly steep carbon tax. All the money goes into one hopper — it does anyway, stop pretending otherwise — but require the books to balance except in cases of narrowly defined emergencies.

A radically progressive flat tax is one that gives extremely generous personal exemptions and NOTHING ELSE. More — it treats every dollar of income the same, regardless of whether it comes from labor, short-term capital gains, or long-term capital gains. Congress would then have only two questions to answer after it determines how much income the government needs to meet its obligations: What is the tax rate, and how high should the personal exemption be. (It is more complicated for businesses, because the definition of “income” is more complicated for a business. But they don’t generate most of the income taxes anyway). If Congress wants to subsidize something, it can authorize the government to write real checks, rather than building complications into the tax code.

As for your point that people won’t support taxes that aren’t targeted, the answer, I fear, is to end the perception that large amounts of tax dollars are wasted on pet projects. A Congress and an Executive that fritter away tax dollars on “bridges to nowhere” or Woodstock memorials deserve to get voted out. That’s how democracy works. Of course, that leads to the question of election reform to change how the system is built to protect incumbents, but that would be an argument for another day.

Mr. Davis, thanks for getting this discussion started. But please, think! I know that targeted taxes, like targeted tax breaks, seem popular and allow the Congress to do lots of things. But the end result is to make government more opaque and less accountable.