As a former programmer, I wish the USA did have a unique identifier for each person. Even now, I still rarely see "collision" of SSN between different people. As a practical person, I'd be willing to entertain the idea of a national ID card if it could be (once finally acquired) used as a single documented proof of eligibility for hiring instead of the collection of other documents. So many systems requiring so many different IDs. That's where I'd like to see some government efficiency.