I agree with what Fred Barnes has to say in his Wall Street Journal column in one particular:
Now Democrats have a new definition of tax reform. “They want to broaden the base and raise tax rates,†says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former head of the Congressional Budget Office. Rather than promote economic growth—a goal of Mr. Bradley and Mr. Gephardt—this approach is almost certain to hamper it. After nearly seven years of sluggish growth during the Obama era, the party seems to think that even an anemic 2% annual increase in GDP is too much.
It takes only a few minutes of watching the Democratic presidential debates to see how profoundly the party’s economic thinking has shifted to the left. Tax cuts are shunned and plans for achieving economic growth are barely mentioned. Tax increases are now the preferred choice of Democrats.
There’s an underlying assumption of slow or no growth. “Economic policy” consists mostly of figuring out how to divvy up the proceeds.
Unfortunately, Mr. Barnes has a weak assumption of his own—he, like most Republicans, assumes that tax cuts always result in economic growth. I think that a better understanding would be that under certain circumstances tax cuts may produce economic growth. I see little evidence that we have those circumstances now.
Fortunately for the Republicans there’s even less evidence that removing money from the private sector (which is what taxation is after all) will result in anything other than less economic growth. Sec. Clinton’s views are clearly that if you get the best minds (i.e. graduates from the best schools) and the biggest companies to put together a plan it will result in more growth, an idea that represents the best economic thought of, say, 1960.
The nostalgia of both political parties is palpable. It might be nice to have some thinking that reflected the circumstances of the early 21st century.
I received a rob-poll call last week that after a few standard background questions, asked:
“If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders?”
That was it, no other scenarios or choices followed. The poll appeared to be testing the doomsday scenario of Clinton indictment and Trump assassination.
FWIW, I picked Sanders.
LOL, Hillary is a Fordist! Soma for everyone!
I still think we should largely (not entirely) eschew the use of tax policy for growth, or for other policy goals. We should mostly just decide what we want our government to do. Taxes should then be set to pay for the government that we want. We would get a lot more bang out of our legislative buck if the same amount of time and effort were spent on deregulation, especially of small business. If they have to spend time on taxes, make it on simplification. Do away with most of the tax expenditures.
Steve
The correct process is to determine what our public sector priorities are and spend accordingly. Taxes should be no greater than necessary to control inflation (I’d prefer flexible wage and price controls but don’t think that’s going to happen) and prevent concentration of power due to income inequality.
I’m with steve on this one. I’ll bet a shiny new dime, to coin a phrase, that you’d get more pop out of regulatory reform.
As far as paying for the government “we” want, that’s kind of the entire problem. There are always advocates for more government “we” want, as long as taxes don’t have to be raised on the waiters, just someone else. So we ended up with the hidden taxes of deficit financing. So much for controlling spending to things “we” want.