Consider highway congestion. Because drivers can generally enter a congested highway without charge, they often do so — thus adding to the crowding. But many drivers would willingly pay a fee for using that road if it resulted in fewer delays. A modest congestion fee, administered with E-ZPass-style technology, would raise needed revenue and provide an incentive to use crowded roads only when the benefits outweigh the social costs.

Critics object that such fees would harm low-income households. But because the gains far exceed their price, we can redistribute them so that everyone comes out ahead. Some of the new revenue, for example, could support tax relief for low-income households.

So, here again, we can easily free resources for solving an important problem.

Similar spillover effects pervade the economy. People have little incentive to consider the danger of carbon emissions, for example, or the risks that the heavy vehicles they drive are posing to others. Taxing carbon emissions and taxing vehicles by weight would expand the economic pie by curtailing activities that do more harm than good. And because some of the resulting revenue could help low-income families, these taxes, too, needn’t be painful.

BY far our largest source of economic waste, however, is the changing context of our spending. The average American wedding, for instance, now costs almost $28,000, up from just $15,000 in 1990, after adjusting for inflation. But spending on a more lavish wedding doesn’t make a couple happier; mainly, it just raises the bar that defines special occasions.

The bad news, then, is that much of our extra consumption in recent decades has been social wheel-spinning. But the good news is that it would be relatively simple to redirect such spending toward more pressing purposes. As I described in an earlier column, this could be accomplished by replacing the current income tax with a more steeply progressive consumption tax, making big-ticket spending much more expensive. It’s a step that both liberals and conservatives have advocated.

None of these taxes should be levied, however, while the economy is still struggling. But approving them now and scheduling them for phase-in only after the economy rebounds would serve two objectives. First, anxious credit markets would be reassured about the nation’s capacity to pay down government debt. And second, the delayed new taxes would speed the recovery by encouraging immediate increases in private spending.

With a carbon tax on the horizon, businesses would rush to develop technologies for adapting to higher energy prices. And consumers would accelerate major purchases to escape the looming consumption tax. The economy would get just the infusion of spending it needs — without the government’s having to spend a penny.

The endless hand-wringing about painful economic choices is misguided. With a few simple policy changes, we could restore full employment, rebuild crumbling infrastructure and pay down the national debt without requiring real sacrifices from anyone.