WBD promises a "middle class miracle." In a comment I submitted to the Times (not yet accepted as I write this), I promised something better than a miracle. Miracles don't happen.
But magic is real. You just have to know the trick. RtO knows it. Here is what I wrote:
Growth is in reality very large. As a percentage of all activity, it is low, but that's because output is YUUUGE. Growth could be even better, but increases by whole percentage points are improbable under any policy.
Reaganomics has directed nearly all of the increases in the past 30 years to the tippy top. Sending more there will not goose growth. The overlarge administrative costs in our healthcare trainwreck are so YUUUGE that if they were reduced to the levels paid by, eg, Canada, so many people would be thrown out of work and so many monetary transfers would be X'd out that the economy would go into recession.
But a great deal of capital would thereby be released so that any growth objectives desired by cutting taxes would follow automatically without cutting taxes. Money is fungible, after all. Growth and deficit hawks should adopt single-payer. It would be like magic.
As with the ACA repeal and replace, the GOP is keeping silent but will, very probably, not deliver the votes Trump needs.
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct. It might be possible to put together a kind of tax reform on a genuine bipartisan deal, but the Republicans do not want reform, they just want another Reaganesque wealth transfer.
ReplyDeleteSo they won't get Democratic votes, and they will splinter their own party in the House.