Hitting a 3% target would result in an economy that’s nearly $13 trillion larger in 30 years.
But consider what happens to the CBO’s numbers assuming 3% annual growth. By 2040 the economy would expand not to $29.9 trillion, but to $38.3 trillion, according to an analysis by Research Affiliates, a California investment firm. That’s an additional output of $8.4 trillion—roughly the entire annual production today of every state west of the Mississippi River... Many blue-chip economists agree with the CBO that a growth rate of about 2% is the best that America can achieve... But the right policies can counter these trends. Productivity should surge with improvements in robotics, artificial intelligence and automation. Self-driving cars could cut transportation costs dramatically in coming years. Washington could facilitate this renaissance by giving companies an incentive to invest.The Tax Foundation predicted last year that the House Republican tax reform alone would raise wages by 8%, GDP by 9% and capital investment by 28%... at least seven million Americans in their prime working years—18 to 65—would be on the job today if labor-force participation had not dropped since 2000. A strong economy, paired with welfare reforms, could draw millions back to work... And immigration is America’s natural demographic safety valve.
Trump Vows to Unveil Tax-Cut Plan Next Week, Surprising Staff
when reporters asked Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, how far away a tax overhaul proposal was, he said he could not give an answer. “Tax reform is way too complicated,” he said.
.. complicated by Mr. Trump’s hopes to revive the Republican health care plan that collapsed last month
.. a senior administration official said the president would release only the “parameters” that Mr. Trump expected a tax plan to follow
- middle-income tax cuts,
- a simplification of personal income taxes, and
- making business taxes more competitive with other countries are the top priorities
.. some skeptics were left questioning whether Mr. Trump was keeping his campaign promises to give working-class Americans a higher priority than Wall Street bankers.
Pfizer-Allergen deal .. were surprised by how aggressively the White House fought the deal. Within a few months, Pfizer and Allergan surrendered
Zombies of Voodoo Economics
Mr. Trump sold himself to voters as unorthodox as well as effective. He was going to be a different kind of president, a consummate deal-maker who would transcend the usual ideological divide. His supporters should therefore be dismayed, not just by his failure to actually close any deals, but by the fact that he evidently has no new ideas to offer, just the same old snake oil the right has been peddling for decades.
.. on Trumpcare, where the administration outsourced its policy to Paul Ryan, who produced exactly the kind of plan you might have expected: take insurance away from millions, make it worse for the rest, and use the money to cut taxes on the wealthy. Populism!
.. Back in 1980 George H. W. Bush famously described supply-side economics — the claim that cutting taxes on rich people will conjure up an economic miracle, so much so that revenues will actually rise — as “voodoo economic policy.” Yet it soon became the official doctrine of the Republican Party, and still is.
.. Yes, the U.S. economy rebounded quickly from the slump of 1979-82. But was that the result of the Reagan tax cuts, or was it, as most economists think, the result of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve?
- Bill Clinton provided a clear test, by raising taxes on the rich. Republicans predicted disaster, but instead the economy boomed, creating more jobs than under Reagan.
- Then George W. Bush cut taxes again, with the usual suspects predicting a “Bush boom”; what we actually got was lackluster growth followed by a severe financial crisis.
- Barack Obama reversed many of the Bush tax cuts and added new taxes to pay for Obamacare — and oversaw a far better jobs record, at least in the private sector, than his predecessor.
- Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas, slashed taxes in what he called a “real live experiment” in conservative fiscal policy. But the growth he promised never came, while a fiscal crisis did.
- At the same time, Jerry Brown’s California raised taxes, leading to proclamations from the right that the state was committing “economic suicide”; in fact, the state has experienced impressive employment and economic growth.
.. Why, then, does it persist? Because it offers a rationale for lower taxes on the wealthy
.. Donald Trump was supposed to be different. Guess what: he isn’t.
.. We might also note that a man who insists that he won the popular vote he lost, who insists that crime is at a record high when it’s at a record low, doesn’t need a fancy doctrine to claim that his budget adds up when it doesn’t.
Why Are Republicans Making Tax Reform So Hard?
One day there is a trial balloon for a value-added tax. The next, the idea of a carbon tax or a reciprocal tax. And now we are hearing the curve ball of a payroll tax cut. Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has thrown cold water on the idea of any tax bill meeting the August deadline.
.. we believe the Republican Party’s lesson for tax reform is this: Don’t try to rewrite the entire tax code in one bill.
.. Instead, the primary goal of Mr. Trump’s first tax bill should be to fix the federal corporate and small-business tax system, which has made America increasingly uncompetitive in global markets and has reduced jobs and wages here at home.
- First, cut the federal corporate and small-business highest tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, which is now one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.
- Second, allow businesses to immediately deduct the full cost of their capital purchases.
- Third, impose a low tax on the repatriation of foreign profits brought back to the United States. This could attract more than $2 trillion
- raising billions for the Treasury while
- creating new jobs and adding to the United States’ gross domestic product.
To help win over Democratic votes .. infrastructure funding ..
financed through the tax money raised from repatriation of foreign profits.