He is vague but his basic points (except maybe "optimized for economic growth, which might be considered so vague as to be meaningless) are at least somewhat reasonable.
Lower (and I would add simpler) taxes help promote growth and efficiency. This is his strongest point.
Education and infrastructure are important so his points are somewhat reasonable. But here his argument is weaker. One problem is that "pork free" is unlikely. Also additional investment esp. in education, might see little real return, we've been roughly doubling real per student spending on education per generation, where are all the massive educational improvements to go with all that extra spending?)
As for lower taxes on capital exploding the deficit, probably not. Even if they come with no change in spending (and I think it should be combined with a serious cut in spending growth, or if possible an actual spending cut it real terms), if lower means say avoiding Obama's plans for an increase, the lower taxes might result in greater revenue (than the revenue would have been after the increase). Capital is mobile, tax it highly and it gets used elsewhere (or less of it gets used, or it get driven underground). If he means an actual cut below the "Bush rates", perhaps (at least ignoring the long run) tax revenue will be lower (even though the inflection point on the Laffer curve for investment/capital taxes is almost certainly lower than for ordinary income, I'm not going to argue that its below 15 percent).
As for "optimized for economic growth", my take on that (which may or may not be his) is to generally get the government out of the way of the economy growing. Lower taxes (or if the deficit situation makes than untenable, at least avoid increasing them), simplify taxes (ideally cut rates even if you can't lower the total net tax burden, compensate for the lower rates with loophole closing and elimination of most targeted tax breaks), and reduce regulation (which doesn't imply that you can't or should not add regulation in certain areas where it may be needed, but the overall burden should be reduced, there is a lot of useless regulation, and some that is worse than useless). |
