Tyler Cowen suggests An Economic Agenda for Republicans, then “handicaps” his ideas’ chances of making it into law:
1) Institute means-testing for Medicare. “The graying of America threatens to bankrupt our national finances, mostly through forthcoming Medicare expenditures. Medicare should be a welfare program for the needy, not a source of comprehensive coverage for wealthy old people.”2) Eliminate all farm subsidies, quotas, and price supports. Eliminate all tariffs. Eliminate all budget earmarks. Eliminate all corporate welfare. “No, these are not the ‘big fish’ in the budget, but we need to take a stand against the totally outrageous.”
3) Take in more high-skilled immigrants, and make them legal. “This is a win-win situation, and we are turning our back on it.”
4) Phase out all forms of capital income taxation, including the corporate income tax, and replace them with a carbon tax, including a gasoline tax. “Savings and investment boost economic growth, but when it comes to energy, global warming threatens as a major problem and our dependence on Middle Eastern oil damages our foreign policy.”
5) Institute full-scale experiments with school vouchers. “Competition is a needed tonic for many of America’s worst schools; in any case, many simply cannot get worse. Make sure that the money is attached to the student, not to the school.”
So how does Cowen handicap any of his ideas ever making it into law?
“The odds? No. 1 will happen sooner or later, but at the last possible moment. It won’t be popular, and it will be introduced in sneak fashion, rather than transparently. No. 2 won’t happen. No. 3 will happen only when the climate of opinion shifts on low-skilled immigrants. Don’t hold your breath. [As for No. 4], I predict we will get a carbon tax under the next Democratic president but not sooner; capital income taxation won’t fall more than it already has. On No. 5, we will try some more poorly thought out voucher experiments, not the real thing.”
Yale poli sci professor Jacob Hacker offers up An Economic Agenda for Democrats.