With respect for the difficult decisions legislators and governors have to make -- up-or-down votes on complicated issues that people like me have the luxury of avoiding -- let me suggest a tax approach that takes account of troubling numbers and trends that increasingly will impinge on Minnesota and the country.

To start, we know that the retirement of approximately 77 million baby boomers (which started this year) will lead to untenable financial demands on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, at least as these programs are currently designed. Here's just one surreal extrapolation out of many: Unless policies change, spending on these three programs alone will consume the entire federal budget by 2045. The projected numbers are so extraordinarily out of whack, it's nearly impossible to conceive how significantly higher taxes can be avoided in coming decades.

We take for granted that without a well-educated workforce, it will be increasingly hard for the United States to compete globally. Yet we also know that while spending on elementary and secondary education in this country has grown enormously over the last several decades, academic achievement and college participation rates in the United States have been just as likely to hold steady or even decline compared with the rest of the world.

Twenty years ago, Americans were awarded almost as many doctorates in engineering and the physical sciences as were Asians. By the start of the current decade, Americans were outnumbered more than 5 to 1.

Somehow the United States still manages to lead the world commercially, and by a great deal. Factor in other shortcomings, such as massive family breakdown, and one is left to wonder exactly how in the world we keep on top economically.

Economist Eric Hanushek of the Hoover Institution has it right when he talks about the potency of "openness and fluidity" of markets in this country and the comparative lack of governmental intrusions. I would add our creativity and entrepreneurialism to the mix. More to the point, our economic success has more to do with our talent for starting and expanding businesses than with the academic abilities (or lack thereof) of various cohorts of citizens.

Does this argue for downplaying education or being lax in improving it? Of course not. Actually, a strong case can be made (Hanushek indeed makes it) that it may only be a matter of time before our educational deficits catch up with us economically. For this and other reasons I'm all for continuing to fund schools generously, particularly graduate and research programs. But let's not assume that spending a lot more money, or anything else politicians are equipped to do, will lead to our kids catching up with young people in other parts of the world, because it won't.

The soundest thing we could do is play to our strength by increasing our entrepreneurial capacity. How?

A first step would be never to lose sight of the guaranteed fact that frail and failing retirees (like me) will increasingly soak up taxes like surgical sponges and that we need to be more cautious than ever in keeping them down (taxes, not old people). The second step would be to recognize that America's key comparative advantage is not anything funded or run by government. Instead, our comparative advantage is rooted in what government doesn't do in stunting economic success. This is not a dogmatic argument but a pragmatic one.

As for Minnesota specifically, in addition to assuring that taxes and bureaucratic burdens don't discourage brilliantly entrepreneurial men and women from starting and expanding businesses, I would only point out there is no inherent reason why the likes of 3M, Cargill and other major employers couldn't or wouldn't someday move their headquarters to friendlier tax climates if the one here grew further skewed and intemperate compared with other locations. Giant enterprises like these do most of their business not only out of state, but out of the country. Vamoosing and taking their passports with them would be messy, but not impossible.