Who Is For Growth?

This weekend, a prominent columnist delivered some bright advice to a presidential candidate:

...make America the launching pad where everyone everywhere should desire to come upwards to launch their ain Luna shot, their ain start-up, their ain social movement. We can’t own or tax-cut our mode to growth. We convey to invent our mode there....

...we should aspire to survive the world’s best launching pad because our operate forcefulness is in addition to then productive; our markets the freest in addition to most trusted; our infrastructure in addition to Internet bandwidth the most advanced; our openness to unusual talent 2nd to none; our funding for basic question the most generous; our dominion of law, patent protection in addition to investment-friendly taxation code the envy of the world; our pedagogy arrangement unrivaled; our currency in addition to involvement rates the most stable; our environs the most pristine; our wellness attention arrangement the most efficient; in addition to our issue energy supplies the most secure, build clean in addition to cost-effective.

No, nosotros are non all those things today...

Ok, quiz time. Is this

1. Some zany free-marketer pushing the Romney crusade to plough over some teeth to its "pro-growth" rhetoric?
2.  Advice to Ron Paul on a speech communication to rouse the Republican convention?
3. Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist extraordinaire, inward its Sunday pages advising the Obama campaign?

 Amazingly, C. The preamble was

Is at that spot an integrated gear upwards of policies, in addition to a narrative, that could animate, inspire in addition to necktie together an Obama 2nd term? I shout out back at that spot is.... Obama should aspire to brand America the launching pad..

Which gives me hope. Friedman is manifestly much improve connected than I. If he thinks at that spot is fifty-fifty a ghost of a run a jeopardy that the Obama crusade would adopt such a strategy, or that the direction would follow anything vaguely similar this policy, that is tremendously practiced news. I idea these sorts of positions, while  middle-of-the-road increase economics, were, inward the political sphere, also wildly free-market to promise for from the Romney campaign.

Think of what they mean.

• "We can’t own our mode to growth" is a remarkable admission for anyone inward the New York Times orbit. Ok, it included "or taxation cut," but an "investment-friendly taxation code" has to hateful depression marginal rates on investment, which agency depression marginal rates on investment income. No mode around it, lower marginal rates, broaden the base.
• "Our currency in addition to involvement rates the most stable" agency likewise abandoning promise that endless rounds of Fed "stimulus" or devaluation every bit the commutation to success. Both statements are a repudiation of discretionary shoot-from-the-hip macroeconomic policy.
• A "productive" operate forcefulness is non composed of protected unions in addition to regime workers, on federal boondoggle contracts.  
• "Openness to unusual talent" agency nosotros convey to allow people in. 
• "Rule of law" agency that health, issue energy in addition to fiscal rule cannot survive run past times powerful regulators in addition to their crony-capitalist protected industries.
• All of Friedman's startups succeed past times undercutting in addition to putting out of concern former ossified but politically good connected companies, aye creating cyberspace novel jobs but destroying a lot of former ones inward the process. 
• If you've been reading this weblog at all, yous know  the likelihood that the electrical flow wellness attention constabulary in addition to expansion of medicare volition deliver anything similar "efficiency."

These are radical views indeed. Congratulations to Friedman for stating them, in addition to I promise his friends at the crusade are listening. H5N1 Nixon-to-China 2nd would sure survive refreshing.

(OK, but the Luna shot analogy is only weird. What does spending nearly iii pct of gross domestic product to mail ii guys to the Luna convey to do amongst unleashing the conception of thousands of novel entrepreneurs? )