It just came to me how we can set up a sort of "volunteer tax", which wouldn't cost the government anything and would appeal to many people if they have spare money to spend on themselves.

Today, our government prints stamps (to send letters). I'm not sure how new images are chosen, but there's always many new ones each year.

With modern replicating methods, it may not be necessary to have huge runs of a printing to make it very economical to offer the public their own images or slogans or even advertising on personalalized stamps.

It would take a "reader" to determine if a given stamp is genuine, (not counterfeit), but then there must be a machine which somehow recognizes whether a given stamp is genuine now, mustn't there?

Now, what if the government would offer you to upload a picture to a web site, and for your (let's say) one thousand dollars, you get (say) five hundred dollars worth of usable stamps! You could use them in any way you want! Some of them would never be put to use at all!

How about it? Anyone say it couldn't be done? Anyone want to have vanity stamps?

Could the same thing be done with legal tender? (Think about it! Maybe it couldn't be used anywhere, but it could be "legal tender" in any bank that has a "reader" or some type of inventory books containing all portraits currently in inventory...)

Say the minimum for a denomination with your picture is $1M, but you only get half of it back. There wouldn't be that many that could afford it, so it would be managable, or if there were thousands, OK, it pays off some of our debt!

Sure, it's a drop in the bucket. Don't like my idea? I'd like to hear your innovative idea!