Socialized stuff.

A surprising number of people are complaining about the possibility of socialized medicine. Most of these same people are not concerned about other socialized (state run and funded) education, road maintenance, postal services, or military protection. These systems may be justified because they work so well (you may insert a sarcastic tone or not, as you see fit), but there is one area where everyone seems to agree that the government just can't do anything right: tax collection. 

These days most companies don't do their own collections. If someone owes you money, you might try sending out a letter or two, but then you turn to a collection agency and forget about the matter. In serious cases you might turn the matter over to the court system. Why should the United States government be any different? Few private sectors are as well developed as the financial sector, and there are already hundreds of businesses (banks and investment firms, for example) that calculate taxes for their customers as a matter of course, plus an entire tax preparation industry devoted to helping citizens and businesses determine what they owe. Isn't it just common sense to have those businesses that spend so much time calculating taxes go ahead and collect them too? 

The government can shut down its costly Internal Revenue Service; some of its budget will have to go to paying the private companies for their tax gathering services, but the odds are that the majority of the profit for these companies will come from the same place it does now -- from customers who are willing to pay more for better service. As competition emerges and we are no longer tied to one single money-gathering service, the ease of paying taxes will improve, and we will all be happier. 

Once we've desocialized the IRS, we can contract out things like printing money and insuring the banks. We will be able to get better interest rates if we are willing to bank at riskier banks (those that have a smaller reserve), or choose to exchange our money for that that of a printer that has chosen to keep their printing run small, and therefor limiting inflation. The current system of socialized money is extremely limiting, and robs us of many choices that as Americans we should expect. 

Maybe once we get over the disgusting socialism of our monetary system, we might want to look at our government, which is not only moderated and funded by the government, but is elected by the populace as a whole -- the very epitome of a socialist system. An plutocracy would be much more American.