Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.

It (land value taxation) guarantees that no one dispossess fellow citizens by obtaining a disproportionate share of what nature provides for humanity.

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

The insane pursuit of the holy grail of a balanced budget in the end is going to drive the economy into a depression.

Firms would be given initial entitlements to gross markup on the basis of past performance, adjusted by changes in labor and capital inputs. This is somewhat similar to the definition of normal profits under some versions of the wartime excess -profits tax. Entitlements would be transferable and a competitive market established.

... often analysis seems to be based on the assumption that future economic output is almost entirely determined by inexorable economic forces independently of government policy so that devoting more resources to one use inevitably detracts from availability for another.

To stick to the present situation would be something like a man who was observed in Times Square looking earnestly along the pavement. He was asked what he was looking for. He said "I lost my watch."