A few Random Ideas for Improving the Average Person's Life

• Simplify the Tax Code

  In addition to the endless maze of deductions that confront us every year as we compute our taxes, Amy and I now (as of the year 2000) get the dubious pleasure of participating in the FSA program. FSAs are medical accounts into which you can deposit tax-free funds which must be used to pay medical or dental costs. The catch is that you must guess as accurately as you can what your medical expenses for the year will be. Because if you don't use everything you deposit, you lose it. Why? Don't ask me, ask the clowns who dreamed up this stupid program so that the average citizen can now waste time outside the normal tax season figuring out how to best take advantage of the deduction.
  
  I think the flat tax that Steve Forbes has been touting would do a lot to more fairly distribute the tax burden across the population and make large corporations pay their fair share. But I believe it's time to move toward a system of green taxes which, while it would be equally equitable, would also provide incentives for everyone to better manage the natural resources under their control. Click here to find out why we should tax waste instead of work.
  
  

• Design Bathrooms with Doors that Swing Outward

  Modern bathrooms in public places often feature a variety of space-age gizmos whose sole purpose is to enable the visitor to perform the tasks necessary to relieving him- or herself (sitting, flushing, washing and drying of hands, etc.) without having to actually touch any potentially unclean surfaces. But many architects don't seem to have figured out that it does no good to install all these devices if everyone just has to grasp the dirty door knob on the way out the door, anyway.
  
  Self-closing doors are old and very cheap technology. Installing them so that they swing outward is a small matter, but it makes all the difference. Because no one needs to touch the door knob in order to leave a bathroom through such a door. A shoulder or raised elbow does the trick just fine. If not, even children can push such doors open by placing their backs against them and walking backwards.
  
  

• Take Those Extra Flaps off the Back of Credit-Card Payment Envelopes Now!

  Some marketing clown dreamed up a way to expose credit-card customers to yet another marketing "opportunity". (As if we didn't have enough advertising in our daily lives!) When you go to seal the envelope on your payment, you first have to rip off an extra flap that has been placed there with an advertising message that you will presumably be better off having seen than not. The only problem is that we customers often don't notice the extra flap until we have sealed the envelope flap to it --which leaves the envelope open for the check to fall out before it arrives at the payment center. Can't they just be satisfied with the countless inserts they stuff into the envelope with the bill? All this garbage just ends up being dumped into the trash can where it belongs, anyway. The handful of times I have responded to such an ad, I've regretted it.
  
  

• And While We're On the Subject:

  Why not do away with the dumb little windows in the envelope that have to line up exactly with the paper inside if the delivery address is to be seen? Would it be so difficult to obtain envelopes with the firm's payment center address printed on them? Also, why not make the envelopes postage paid and then just add that amount to the customer's bill? It would make it so much easier to pay bills. Either way, we have to buy the stamps. I certainly wouldn't mind paying the postage to the credit-card or utility company. And the post office might be willing to give companies who do this a break in the postage rate which would allow them yet another way of making a little profit because it would save on stamps and lessen the chance that items would be returned to the sender for lack of postage. Everyone would win in such a scenario.