So can a dozen people from disparate backgrounds and ideologies absorb the complexities of California’s multifaceted tax system in perhaps 25 hours of meetings and write an overhaul to bring more revenue stability that could survive the political chopping block of the Legislature?

Not bloody likely, but the grandiosely named Commission on the 21st Century Economy began its work Thursday in a remote corner of the University of California, San Diego, campus with good, if perhaps unrealistic, intentions.

No one questions that the revenue system, dominated by the personal income and sales taxes, is distorted. It tends to generate multibillion-dollar windfalls of revenues during economic upticks, and drop precipitously even in mild downturns, while a serious recession, such as the one we’re now experiencing, sends revenues into the toilet, creating monumental budget deficits.

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