This was my day: I went to the dentist. I spent an hour being interviewed on end-of-life issues. And I listened to four tax experts commiserate about the massive fiscal hole we have dug for ourselves and how we can shovel our way out. I’ve had better. Yet, the Tax Policy Center panel, called Desperately Seeking Revenue, generated more than the usual budget gloom and doom. True, TPC co-director Rosanne Altshuler presented some truly hair-raising projections of the depth of the problem: In sum, she made two points: 1) Unless we act, we will add $11 trillion over the next decade to the national debt, roughly doubling what we already owe. 2) It is not possible, in any reasonable world, to close that gap by hiking income tax rates alone. Thus, the title of both her paper on the subject (written with colleagues Bob Williams and Katherine Lim) and the panel: Desperately Seeking Revenue.

Last week Fox Business News asked me whether it was a problem that nearly half of all Americans paid no federal income tax last year. I’ve gotten that question repeatedly since I reported the Tax Policy Center estimate that 47 percent of all taxpayers and 55 percent of the elderly and families with children paid no federal individual income tax in 2009. (Remember, however, that most people who pay no federal income tax do pay Social Security, Medicare and other federal taxes as well as state taxes.) Still, reporters and others want to know if it is fair that so many people pay “no” tax?