Here’s a quick idea for a series of blog posts: “If you want to do [x], you will need to address the following 10 items; everything else is negligible.” For instance: if you want to cut the Federal budget appreciably, you’ll need to cut defense, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or the interest on the federal debt; everything else amounts to very little. (In particular, the National Endowment for the Arts amounts to very little. There may be a list of sound ideological reasons to kill it, but budget-balancing is not at the top of that list.)

Or: if you want to raise American life expectancy, you’ll need to reduce a few major causes of death; giving everyone a flu shot, while useful, won’t cut it.

Or: if you want to reduce health-care costs, you’ll need to focus on the last few years of life; making me pay more for the occasional X-ray won’t cut it.

These are just hypothetical examples, and I’ve not worked out the detailed numbers on any of them; doing so would be part of the fun of the exercise. The goal of the exercise, overall, is to give people — including myself! — a clarifying idea of where the big wins come from. For instance, how much life expectancy could we gain from imposing a $1 tax on cigarettes? (A book I read recently but haven’t yet reviewed probably contains exactly this number.)

Useful idea? What else would people like to see in such a series?