Economist Taylor: Pawlenty target “makes a great deal of sense”
Monday, June 13, 2011 at 8:08AM Fox News’ Chris Wallace drilled down on former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty’s financial plan on Sunday, and Wallace appeared intent on making the GOP presidential candidate back down. Pawlenty was having none of it and he said an influential economist found the plan’s growth targets “reasonable.”
John B. Taylor, professor of economics at Stanford University, did say that, and more, about Pawlenty’s plan.
Taylor wrote on his blog, Economics One, “Some skeptics have complained about the 5% national economic growth target put forth by former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty in his speech this week about his economic plan. They say it can’t be done. But I think the goal makes a great deal of sense. It would focus policymakers like a laser beam on the great benefits that come from higher growth and on the pro-growth policies needed to achieve it. As with any goal, if you take it seriously, you’ll choose policies that work toward that goal and reject those that don’t.”
Taylor backed up his assessment with an explanation even Chris Wallace (or I, for that matter) could understand.
Legacy media’s vetting of Team Pawlenty’s plan stands in sharp contrast to the vetting of the Democrat agenda that propelled then Sen. Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. Part of the reason Pawlenty will be grilled is that he actually had the nerve to offer specifics rather than relying on the timeworn slogan of ‘hope and change.’
Taylor’s explanation can’t be truncated, but he offers details to support his assessment of Pawlenty’s plan.
Taylor concludes, “You can see how the types of pro-growth policies in the Pawlenty plan would work toward the goal by reducing spending growth enough to balance the budget without tax increases and thereby remove threats of a debt crisis; by lowering marginal tax rates to spur hiring and job growth; by scaling back unnecessary new regulations which impede private investment and higher productivity, and by restoring sound monetary policy to remove uncertainty about inflation or another financial crisis.”
I’d personally point out something I’ve observed in talking to numerous small business owners—“scaling back unnecessary new regulations which impede private investment and higher productivity.”
The U.S. is competing against foreign countries who are only too glad to do away with any regulations that might impede private investment. What our country needs is to return to an era of robust production.
There’s another shocking figure in Taylor’s breakdown. Taylor wrote, “Currently the percentage of the working-age population (age 16 and over) that is actually working is very low at 58.4 percent.”
It’s too bad Wallace and his fellows in media can’t find the time to grill Obama about that figure.
The Register-Citizen (Conn.) had this to say about the Obama approach: “According to the Keynsian Creed, if the government during a downturn spends, say, $800 billion, the benefit to the economy will be as much as three times that figure. Sounds a bit like hocus-pocus, but the believers swear to it.”
(Commentary by Kay B. Day/June 13, 2011)
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