With Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly leading on the polls, and the Republican Party self destructing in the primaries, there is a chance that the next US president will be a woman.

So it is prudent to dust off some of Hillary?s favorite tax plans and figure how much this great leap into the future is going to cost us.

As for me, I am going to have to learn how to enjoy hiking in the High Sierras missing an arm and a leg.

I don?t care if you are still licking your wounds from the last payroll tax rise, or the federal tax hike for millionaires, which in my case took my rate up from 35% to 39.5%, and then 43.3% with the Obamacare add on. At least the capital gains tax is still a steal at 20%.

And then there?s my carried interests.

At $420 billion, the budget deficit is so enormous that bringing it into balance merely through spending cuts is a mathematical impossibility.

If you own your own home, work for a large company, save for your retirement, earn money from capital gains or carried interests, and toss in a check when they pass the dish around at church every Sunday, you are the biggest beneficiary of the current tax system.

Therefore, you are Hillary?s primary target. Check out Clinton?s wish list below, the logic she will use for each one, and the revenues the death of these tax breaks will raise:

$264 billion- Should those without health care subsidize those who receive it for free from their employers? This is the amount raised by taxing company provided health insurance as regular income. Think large banks, oil companies, and yes, hedge funds. Those with plans valued over $10,000 are already being taxed. Expect all of it to get taxed.

$100 billion- Should renters be subsidizing homeowners? Kiss that home mortgage interest deduction goodbye. The more aggressive version of this has the ceiling on deductions dropping to loans of only $500,000.

$100 billion- End the tax deductibility of charitable contributions. Should those who don?t go to church subsidize those who do? In fact, some 90% of this money currently goes to the fine arts patronized by the well off. Universities, churches, and political fund raising will go begging.

$70 billion ? The carried interest treatment of deferred income, originally introduced by President Carter to spur venture capital investment, has evolved into a subsidy for the ?1%?. Both parties now blame it for concentrating too much wealth at the top. This is target number one for everyone. Gosh, it?s been a great run though.

$52 billion- Should those without savings subsidize those salting away money for retirement. This is the argument that will be made to end tax deductibility of 401k contributions. After all, some 60% of the country has no savings whatsoever. This is a stretch, but the talk is out there.

$39 billion- Savings on taxes exempted by the step up in the cost bases for investments inherited by surviving spouses. She doesn?t need that McMansion anyway.

$36 billion- Tax capital gains as regular income. This won?t affect you if you never sell and let your heirs sort out the mess.

$31 billion- Stop special tax treatment of dividend incomes.

Please note that these most draconian measures only raise $656 billion a year, more than wiping out the current budget deficit. But if a special interest group succeeds in preserving any of the preferential treatments above, then you will have to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense spending and of course the big one, Obamacare.

In any case, I think it will be politically impossible to get any of these changes through the current congress. An energy tax and a national value added tax are also on the table.

The key to understanding American politics for the next decade is that gridlock will be the winner of any future election. It is highly unlikely that one party will gain control of the presidency and both houses of congress.

So Hillary can propose all she wants, but is unlikely to get anything done. She will be checkmated, much like President Obama has been for the past five years.

So you can climb off that ledge now.

None of these hikes would be necessary if the economy grew at a 4% real rate instead of the present 2-2.5%.

I think this will happen during the 2020?s, thanks to a huge demographic tailwind, no matter which party is in power. This is why tax rates in emerging countries are so impossibly low.

Of course, we could adopt Mary Meeker?s suggestion in her paper on USA, Inc. and eliminate all deductions, raising about $1 trillion a year. That would involve shrinking the Internal Revenue Code from the current 71,000 pages to a single page, and moving to a flat tax system.

The mass unemployment of one million CPA?s and 106,000 internal revenue agents alone would be worth the price.

A number of friends have recently approached me asking the best way to refinance their home.

Should they be ultra conservative and lock in a historically low 3.9% conventional fixed rate 30-year loan? Or should they throw caution to the wind and be seduced by a 5/1 ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) available for half the monthly payment?

I tell them that the answer is obvious. All they have to do is closely watch the iron ore market for Chinese delivery.

Last week, the price of this principal raw material for steel fell to $43.5 per metric tonne, the lowest since the 2008 crash, off a gut churning 77% from its 2010 high.

I don?t think I?ll be singing ?Waltzing Matilda? in the shower anytime soon. That?s the national anthem of Australia, the world?s largest producer of the orange rocks.

If my answer puzzles them, I then direct them to the recent statement by the Saudi Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi. He says his kingdom will continue its present record levels of oil production, even if the price plummets to $20 a barrel.

If they then appear perplexed, I point out to them that US ethanol production just surpassed a once unimaginable 1 million barrels a day, a new all time high. Corn prices have fallen so far that it is cheaper to burn food than to eat it.

At this point, the expression on my friends? faces is now one on complete befuddlement. They start checking their watch, their iPhone for any new text messages, look for new tweets, or updates to their Facebook account.

Then I move in for the kill.

I point out that the Baltic Freight Index ($BDX) has just hit an eight year low. This is the widely followed index for the cost of moving bulk raw materials, like coal, grain, and iron ore.

Now my friends are utterly clueless. Wasn?t this supposed to be a conversation about homes, loans, and interest rates.

If they still don?t get it, I then spell it out more clearly, with the appropriate soaring logic and literary flourishes.

The bottom line for all of these disparate data points is that deflation is accelerating.

The continuing collapsing cost of all commodities is still driving prices relentlessly downward. This year, I think only the price of coca has risen.

Adding fuel to the fire is the relentless march of technology, which replacing expensive humans with cheap machines, further lowering costs.

The offshoring of jobs, once a major driver of the ongoing price collapse, is barely a factor anymore. Rapidly rising wages are steadily pricing Chinese labor out of the market.

Sure, there has been some modest cost increases on the US wage front with the new minimum wage movement. Many cities like Seattle and San Francisco have already mandated wage hikes from $8 to $15 an hour.

But this will only bring higher prices for those who eat fast food cheeseburgers, tacos, and burritos, which my doctors have expressly forbidden me to consume.

What this means is that interest rates are going to remain far lower for longer than even the Federal Reserve can imagine.

Sure, we will get a 25 basis point rise in December, followed by a second one in March, or June. But that may be it.

As unbelievable as it may seem, we might go into the next recession WITH INTEREST RATES ALREADY CLOSE TO ZERO!

All of this makes my friends? choice about how to refinance their home a complete no-brainer. Take the 5/1 ARM, NOW!

Chances are that we will enter a recession sometime in the next five years, before the first five-year interest rate reset. Then they can refinance again, probably at an interest rate even lower than the subterranean one they are getting now.

They can also reconsider the 30-year fixed rate at that time, as I expect inflation to return with a vengeance sometime in the 2020?s.

More than a few homeowners have already figured out that the only way to afford sky-high housing prices in San Francisco and New York is to finance them with the ultra low giveaway cost of money.

The only pre-conditions for this plan to work is for them to keep their jobs, the payments on time, and their credit rating up.

At this stage, my friends thank me effusively and rush off to call their loan brokers.

People who have known me a long time are used to me to making incredible, spectacular, out of consensus long-term forecasts, which eventually come true.

Yes, gold is going from $34 to $1,000 an ounce (1972).

Of course the Nikkei Average is about to rise tenfold from Y3,500 to Y35,000 (1982).

Dow 10,000 by 2,000? You betcha (1992)!

Why can?t oil collapse from $100 to $50 if we make peace with Iran (2014)?

Consider it all part of being Mad.

So, Where?s the Inflation?

$20 Oil? No Problem!