That would a) never happen in the current US political climate and b) provide enough ammunition to those against such a mode as to be extremely counter-productive towards other social programs that could deal with more government support.

In other words, think back on all the talk of Democrat being "socialists" over the recent years and imagine the field day conservatives would have if any national figure mentioned this as an idea out loud, and how that might be used to shift the balance of power such that other meaningful programs that could deal with additional governmental support and regulation (healthcare) get set back.

Thanks for your reply. I hear you 100%, and a few years ago your objections would've appeared in my own head were I to have even considered writing what I wrote. I simply wouldn't have written it.

But it's really interesting to me that what you wrote is about the feasibility of the idea and not the idea itself. Of course, you may think it's a shitty idea - and it may indeed be! But I'd claim that it says something really fucked up about America that your first response was what it was: "couldn't ever happen, plus it would hurt what we do have if this were 'mentioned out loud'" instead of "here's why that's a bad idea".

> imagine the field day conservatives would have if any national figure mentioned this as an idea out loud, and how that might be used to shift the balance of power such that other meaningful programs that could deal with additional governmental support and regulation (healthcare) get set back.

"Shhh! Don't say that too loud -- they'll hear you and then take away our nice things!"

My reply to this is that "other meaningful programs" are already being set back with or without talk of currently-insane ideas like nationalizing a ghoulish company like Intuit/TurboTax. They've been getting set back since the 70's at least, and so-called "conservatives" are coming for more! Let's ask George W. Bush, who at the end of what he deemed a successful presidency only regretted that he wasn't able to kill Social Security!! These peoples' mission is to ensure that any vestige of a welfare state in the US is not only erased, but that merely talking about such a thing becomes so ludicrous-sounding that people dismiss it as impossible. It's working!

The other part of this is just this: love him or hate him - and yes, he's not the president - Bernie friggin' Sanders has walked around this country extremely visibly for the past half-decade calling himself a "socialist" in public, advocating for a complete "political revolution" and millions upon millions of Americans heard him and went "actually that doesn't sound so bad".

I believe that the world we live in is one we made. That's scary, because look at this fuckin' place, but it's hopeful too: we can make a different one. If there are obstacles to doing so, so be it -- but our silence, no matter how rational, doesn't need to be one of them.

Rather than nationalize Intuit, if we take for granted that TurboTax is indeed too complicated a product to efficiently replicate, couldn't the government simply strike a deal to acquire the TurboTax IP?

From there, we'd just shut down or deprecate the original TurboTax service, and launch our rebranded fork as a free government-provided service like healthcare.gov (could call it taxes.gov). That would work as a short-term solution to make taxes easier for everyone, and it would remove lobbyist pressure against implementing long-term improvements like simplifying the tax code and automating everyone's taxes by default.

It would work for a few years. Then more laws pass, court cases get decided, and the tax code would get more complicated. Now even TurboTax is a pain to use, and (as it ends up) the bureaucrats in charge of improving it are just as incapable as the ones rolling out healthcare.gov and similar disasters.

And then to deal with that, a new company emerges with a service that makes even TurboTax easy to use!

The idea that bureaucrats would competently manage it this time is difficult to believe.