It is folks like this who continue to want to score the stimulus solely based on employment created by stimulus projects, without considering the fact that someone was using the money for some productive purpose before the government took or borrowed it.
There is nothing on Earth like the US tax code. It is an extremely complex system that nobody understands well. But it is unique among all the complex things in the world, in that it's complexity is perfectly replicated by the MATHEMATICAL MODEL of the system. Because the mathematical model is the system.
Hence, one could put the entire US tax code into a spare computer somewhere, try a myriad inputs, outputs... and tweak every parameter to see how outputs change. There are agencies who already do this, daily, in response to congressional queries. Alterations of the model must be tested under a wide range of boundary conditions (sample taxpayers.) But if you are thorough, the results of the model will be the results of the system.
Now. I'm told (by some people who know about such things) that it should be easy enough to create a program that will take the tax code and cybernetically experiment with zeroing-out dozens, hundreds of provisions while sliding others upward and then showing, on a spreadsheet, how these simplifications would affect, say, one-hundred representative types of taxpayers.
South Bend Seven have a number of pointed comments, but I will just offer the obvious: Only half of the tax calculation is rates and formulas. The other half is the underlying economic activity (such as income) to which the taxes are applied. Brin's thesis falls apart for the simple reason that economic activity, and particularly income, are not variables independent of the tax code. In fact, economic activity can be extremely sensitive to changes in the tax code.
The examples are all around us -- the 1990 luxury tax tanked high end boat sales. The leveraged buyout craze of the 80's and housing bubble of the 00's are both arguably fed in part by the tax code's preference for debt. The entire existence of employer-paid (rather than individual-paid) health insurance is likely a result of the tax code. And of course there are all the supply-side and incentives effects that Kos readers likely don't accept but exist none-the-less.