How Twitter Users Balanced the Budget (nytimes.com)

Yes, interesting. One might almost cynically suggest that they're in favour of all tax increases as long as they're paid by somebody else.

At the end you could start over and do it again. If you published to Twitter the could count that as 1 person, you may of done it on the NYTimes site 5 or 10 times before doing that though.

Its easy to scrape the data post mortem from twitter users, since NYT gave them specific links. I imagine they didnt think to record users data until it was too late: twitter happened to have a log available.

Just a guess - but might have gone against the privacy policy. At no point did it mention it would collect and aggregate data. But once you tweet it then it's in public view then... Plus it's easier to map 1 verified twitter user to a real person.

Married couples are allowed to file separately if they wish.

The only proposals for a "national sales tax", which was listed, have been VATs.

I think it's a good choice to only allow non-radical options. Everyone knows that going full-tilt libertarian and making spending cuts that would never even conceivably pass would eliminate the deficit; it's more realistic and illuminating to see what can be done within the realm of the possible.

"Politics is the art of the possible." --Bismarck

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." --John Kenneth Galbraith