And other things. But on public finance, he writes,

The central goal of a growth-oriented tax system is to raise the revenue needed to fund necessary government spending at minimal distortion to the economy, and in particular minimizing the sorts of distortions that impede the growth process.

This is a very basic statement, and I believe that it would be difficult to come up with a good economic argument against it. What it implies is that using the tax code for social engineering is entirely wrong. Subsidies should be subsidies, not tax credits or tax deductions.

But the implications go further. Poor people face very high implicit marginal tax rates, because of the hard cut-offs on benefit programs. As you know, I favor consolidating all benefit programs into a single flexible benefit taxed at about a 20 to 25 percent rate. Also, taxes discourage work (the payroll tax) and thrift (the corporate income tax and other taxes on capital).

There is still room for disagreement about the trade-off between redistribution through taxation and economic growth. But there are many tax reforms on which economists could agree, politics aside.

Peter Spiliakos writes,

I suspect that many Republican politicians sincerely see their own party as composed of sober businessmen, plus crazy people wearing tricorne hats, plus crazy people waving fetus selfies, plus crazy people jabbering about Mexicans. The behavior of establishment Republican politicians can be seen as trying to placate/gull the various crazies so that the real work of the business lobbies can finally get done.

Amusing sentences (“fetus selfies”). In thinking about this, I am inclined to differentiate between two aspects of the Republican base. On the one hand, there is the Tea Party. On the other hand, there is the Trump/Fiorina Party.

At one point, I thought that the Tea Party’s issues were the bailouts, government spending in general, and Obamacare. On those issues, I am with the Tea Party and I share their disappointment with the Republican establishment, as represented by John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and John Roberts.

The Trump/Fiorina party looks different. Trump wants to appeal to xenophobia, and Fiorina wants to mobilize the right-to-lifers. If the Republican establishment would prefer to be softer on immigration and less obsessed with the abortion issue, then I am with the establishment.

Of course, Democrats and the media do not see this distinction between the Tea Party and the Trump/Fiorina Party. They use Tea Party as an all-purpose boo-word. So they treat Trump and Fiorina are synonymous with Tea Party.

But to me the difference matters. And I am struck by the disappearance of what I thought of as the Tea Party as a factor in current politics. I hope that in the next several months the Tea Party comes back and the Trump/Fiorina Party recedes.

In an essay that I saw after writing this, Jerry Taylor makes the case that the Republican race, and in particular Rand Paul’s poor showing, is an indication that libertarianism is weak among the masses. And he also throws some cold water on my own hopes:

According to a survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, more than half the Tea Party is made up of the religious right while only 26 percent—the smallest ideological bloc within the group—can be loosely described as Libertarian. And Tea Partiers have always manifested a large degree of nativist populism.

Have a nice day.

The Hill reports,

Five top Democratic economists are criticizing Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and the left-leaning Brookings Institution for forcing one of its nonresident economic fellows to resign.

Read the whole thing. I don’t see how Brookings can say it is defending its integrity by caving into bullying. As I said earlier, you can either defend the research or you cannot. If Brookings had focused on the issue of whether or not the study is valid, they would have been fine. Instead, they let Senator Warren discredit the researcher, regardless of whether the study is valid.

You may remember that I did not like it when Congress beat up on Jonathan Gruber, either.

This Brookings incident has made me angry with many people on many levels.

1. I thought that some Republican once told Senator McCarthy, “Joe, you’re a real S.O.B. But you’re our S.O.B.” But apparently no one ever said exactly that, although Senator Bricker said something close.

2. When President Obama uses high-handed means to achieve his ends, I think of Progressives murmuring that he is “our S.O.B.”

3. Interpreting voter opinion is a fool’s game, on the order of interpreting short-term movements in the stock market. Still, I am going to be a fool, and offer an interpretation of the Trump boom as a desire on the part of some voters for “our S.O.B.”

Why would a Republican voter be in the mood for an S.O.B.? I think it is perhaps a reaction against John, John, and Mitch.

President Obama has used a “words mean whatever I say they mean” approach to implementing the Affordable Care Act. Instead of slapping him down, as an S.O.B. might have done, John Roberts effectively said, “I’ve got your back.”

When Republican voters delivered a landslide in November of 2014, the Republican leaders acted as if it never happened. Instead of acting like S.O.B.’s, Boehner and McConnell have compromised with and caved into Obama like they were John Kerry at a meeting with the Iranian nuclear delegation.

Hence, the longing for “our S.O.B.”

In any casey, if you were one of those libertarians who sensed a yearning for someone who wants to return America to its roots of limited government and aversion to foreign intervention, it appears you might have over-estimated the American voter just a tad. Sorry, Nick, Matt, David, …

Maybe it’s time to give Seasteading another look.