1. Mortgage interest deduction–if eliminated tax revenue would increase
2. Health care exemption–if eliminated, tax revenue would increase
3. Corporate income tax–tax revenue would decrease (putting aside increases in revenue from dividends and capital gains)
4. Consumption tax instead of income tax–could be designed to be revenue neutral
5. Carbon emissions tax would increase revenues
6. Legalizing marijuana – likely reduces spending, and if fully legalized could provide an additional source of revenue through taxation.

- quit your job
- divorce your spouse
- train for an ultramarathon
- bicycle to work

Without knowing what your new job (or plan for getting a new job) is, who’s going to take care of your kids and how this is going to work, what you’re going to give up to train for your ultramarathon, and whether it’s even safe to bike to work, how can you say that you _should_ do any of these things?

This is disheartening to hear from economists, whom I believe all have the idea “opportunity cost” branded in some secret place when they are initiated into the tribe. The value of something (tax cut in this case) is equal to what you give up to get it. I learned that from Yoram Bauman’s summary of Mankiw’s principles. What do we give up and/or gain in the bargain? Better or worse taxes? Better or worse government programs? Better or worse deficit financing? A dysfunctional or highly functional health-care delivery and payment system?

To put that in familiar terms: if the proposal were to end the tax subsidy on employer-sponsored health care and replace it with a British NHS-style system, I suspect a lot of conservatives would prefer the status quo, while if the replacement were some flavor of individual insurance market, conservatives would like it more. If revenue lost from eliminating all income taxes is replaced by a broad-based national consumption/VAT, it would be more or less attractive to different economists than if it were replaced by pushing all expenses to state-level income, sales and property taxes, or required introducing capitation taxes, or what have you.

So I look at these and don’t see serious policies. I see bland, mom & apple-pie economist notions that are absolutely meaningless out of context. We may as well have policy prescriptions that everyone acts rationally based on full information to maximize their utility function.

I don’t disagree that any of these might be useful to contemplate, but outside of the broader policy context, agreement or disagreement is along the lines of agreeing with a 6-year old who wants a pony.