Choice

2024 11 03

These are the criteria by which I judge the candidates.  I want

·       Strong, rapid economic growth

o   Lots of merit-based immigration

o   Less restrictions of imports (except strategic stuff from China), free-ish trade with everybody else.

o   Smaller deficits, deficits = Σ(expenditures with NPV>0), [which in some cases means more expenditures with NPV > 0]  

§  Consumption VAT, not the wage tax, to fully finance social insurance

§  Progressive consumption tax (business income imputed to owners)

o   Taxation of net emissions of CO2 instead of other subsidies and regulations to that end.

o   Cleaning up of mis-regulation (not guided by cost-benefit analysis):

§  Jones Act

§  Sugar quota,

§  Farm subsidies including ethanol,

§  EPA, NRC, CDC, FDA TSA, FAA

§  Surface and subsurface mis-pricing of water pricing, especially in the West

§  Urban land use and building code

§  Subsidized hazard insurance s

o   Congestion and use pricing of roads and streets

o   FAIT (or possibly FNGDPLT) management of monetary policy by an independent Fed

o   S&L infrastructure investment through an Infrastructure Bank using CBA and developing best design, procurement, and cost recovery practices  

·       More social insurance

o   Child allowance

o   More generous unemployment benefit (though hopefully little needed with FAIT)

o   Wage subsidy like EITC instead of minimum wages

o   Universal (~ACA+) health insurance instead of employment-, age-, and income-related coverage

o   Continued increase in the "retirement" (outmoded concept) age.

Judging Trump and Harris against this agenda, Harris is much less bad than Trump on deficits and trade and actually _good_ on immigration and Fed independence and much better on social insurance (maybe only less bad on health insurance). 

If these were not enough, Harris is right on abortion and Ukraine and less likely to attempt a coup if the margin is small.

Harris is a clear choice. 

Image prompt: bifurcating road, one branch leading down to a dystopian scene, the other level ground in normal, pleasant, not paradisical scene.  [Perhaps appropriately, what I took after several tries was the least bad one. 😊]

[Standard bleg:  Although my style is know-it-all-ism, I do sometime entertain the thought that, here and there, I might be mistaken on some minor detail.  I would welcome comments on these views.]