Five Takeaways from the 2018 Elections…and Implications for Liberty

We had an election yesterday in the United States (or, as Mencken sagely observed, an advance auction of stolen goods). Here are five things to keep in mind about the results.

First, the GOP did better than most people (including me) expected.

This tweet captures the zeitgeist of last night.

A lot of painful losses for Republicans tonight, but man would I be unhappy if I was a Democrat tonight with these results in this climate.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 7, 2018

The Senate results were especially disappointing for the Democrats. It does appear the Kavanaugh fight worked out very well for Republicans.

Second, better-than-expected election news for the GOP does not imply better-than-expected news for public policy. Given Trump’s semi-big-government populism, I fear this tweet is right about the increased risk of a counterproductive infrastructure package and a job-destroying increase in the minimum wage.

Santorum says on CNN that he expects Trump to take advantage of Dem house to pass infrastructure and raise the minwage.

— David Freddoso (@freddoso) November 7, 2018

For what it’s worth, I think we’ll also get even more pork-filled appropriations spending. In other words, busting the spending caps after already busting the spending caps.

The only thing that might save taxpayers is that Democrats in the House may be so fixated on investigating and persecuting Trump that it poisons the well in terms of cooperating on legislation.

Fingers crossed for gridlock!

Third, there was mixed news when looking at the nation’s most important ballot initiatives.

On the plus side, Colorado voters rejected an effort to replace the flat tax with a discriminatory system (in order to waste even more money on government schools), California voters sensibly stopped the spread of rent control, Washington voters rejected a carbon tax, Florida voters expanded supermajority requirements for tax increases, and voters in several states legalized marijuana.

On the minus side, voters in four states opted to expand the bankrupt Medicaid program, Arizona voters sided with teacher unions over children and said no to expanded school choice, and voters in two states increased the minimum wage.

Fourth, Illinois is about to accelerate in the wrong direction. Based on what happened last night, it’s quite likely that the state’s flat tax will be replaced by a class-warfare-based system. In other words, the one bright spot in a dark fiscal climate will be extinguished.

This will accelerate the out-migration of investors, entrepreneurs, and businesses, which is not good news for a state that is perceived to be most likely to suffer a fiscal collapse. It’s just a matter of time before the Land of Lincoln becomes the land of bankruptcy.

Interesting, deep-blue Connecticut voters elected a Republican governor. Given the state’s horrific status, I suspect this won’t make a difference.

Fifth, Obama was a non-factor. Democrats lost almost every race where he campaigned.

Obama took norm-breaking step of campaigning in midterm against his successor. Visited Indiana, Georgia, Florida in recent days. Didn't go well. Indiana and Florida flipped Senate seats from Dem to GOP. Democrat Abrams lost governor race in GA.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 7, 2018

Though I should point out that he deserves credit for trying to have an impact in close races. Many top-level politicians, looking to have a good “batting average,” only offer help to campaigns that are likely to prevail.

That being said, this adds to my hypothesis that Obama was basically an inconsequential president.

2018 Election Predictions…and Potential Economic Consequences

If you look at my election predictions from 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, you’ll see that my occasional insights are matched by some big misses. So I don’t think I offer any special insight.

But since readers seem to enjoy these biennial predictions, I’ll once again go out on a limb. The bottom line is that my Democratic friends will be happy.

Since so many Democratic seats are up, it will be a big defeat if Republicans stay at 51 seats in the Senate. And the loss of more than 45 seats in the House is approaching bloodbath territory.

This outcome is why I advised my GOP friends that it might have been better to lose the 2016 presidential election.

Now let’s consider the potential economic implications, which is what I care about.

The first-order effect is that we’ll have gridlock and that’s not a bad outcome as far as I’m concerned. Simply stated, that means less legislation, which presumably means less mischief from Washington.

But not all gridlock is created equal. Here’s a chart published a couple of days ago by the Washington Post. I’ve highlighted in green relative stock market performance when there’s good gridlock with a Republican Congress and not-so-good gridlock with a Democratic Congress.

I don’t think S&P performance is the best indicator of prosperity, and the “sample size” produced by American elections it rather small, so I caution against over-interpreting this data.

That being said, I’ve crunched budget numbers and revealed that Republican presidents generally allow more spending than Democrats. The only exception to this rule is Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately, as I warned the day after the 2016 election, Trump is no Reagan. As such, I wouldn’t be surprised if the net result (assuming my predictions are remotely accurate) is that the already-excessive growth of spending becomes an even bigger problem.

P.S. There are some very important ballot initiatives that will be decided today.

With Good Policy, Poor Nations Can Converge with Rich Nations

The theory of “economic convergence” is based on the notion that poor nations should grow faster than rich nations and eventually achieve the same level of development.

This theory is quite reasonable, but I’ve pointed out that decent public policy (i.e., free markets and small government) is a necessary condition for convergence to occur.

The link between good policy and convergence explains why Hong Kong and Singapore, for instance, have caught up to the United States.

And the adverse effect of bad policy is a big reason why Europe continues to lag.

Moreover, it also explains why some nations with awful policy are de-converging.

Today, let’s look at convergence between Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

Here are some excerpts from a new study published by the European Central Bank.

This paper analyses real income convergence in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe (CESEE) to the most advanced EU economies between 2000 and 2016. …The paper establishes stylised facts of convergence, analyses the drivers of economic growth and identifies factors that might explain the differences between fast- and slow-converging economies in the region. The results show that the most successful CESEE economies in terms of the pace of convergence share common characteristics such as, inter alia, a strong improvement in institutional quality and human capital, more outward-oriented economic policies, favourable demographic developments and the quick reallocation of labour from agriculture into other sectors. Looking ahead, accelerating and sustaining convergence in the region will require further efforts to enhance institutional quality and innovation, reinvigorate investment, and address the adverse impact of population ageing.

The study is filled with fascinating data (at least if you’re a policy wonk).

This chart, for example, shows how many nations are converging (the dots above the diagonal line) and how many nations are falling behind (the dots below the diagonal line).

The yellow dots are Eastern European nations, so it’s good news that all of them are experiencing some degree of convergence.

But the above graphic doesn’t provide any details.

So let’s look at another chart from the study. The blue bar shows per-capita GDP in selected Eastern European nations as a share of the EU average. The yellow dot shows where the countries were in 2008 and the orange dot shows where they were in 2000.

The good news, at least relatively speaking, is that all nations are catching up to Western Europe.

But the report notes that some are catching up faster than others.

The developments were…heterogeneous within CESEE countries that are EU Member States. Some of them (the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) experienced particularly fast convergence in the period analysed. At the same time, other CESEE EU Member States found it hard to converge… In fact, GDP per capita in Croatia and Slovenia diverged from the EU average after 2008… Given these heterogeneous developments, it appears that while in some CESEE countries the middle-income trap hypothesis could be dismissed (at least given their experience so far), in others the signs of a slowdown in convergence after reaching a certain level of economic development are visible.

My one gripe with the ECB study is that there’s a missing piece of analysis.

The report does a great job of documenting relative levels of prosperity over time. And it also has a thorough discussion of the characteristics that are found in fast-converging countries.

But there’s not nearly enough attention paid to the policies that promote and enable convergence. Why, for instance, has there been so much convergence in Estonia and so little convergence in Slovenia?

So I’ve tinkered with the above chart by adding each nation’s ranking for Economic Freedom of the World.

Lo and behold, a quick glance shows that higher-ranked nations (blue numbers indicate a nation is in the “most free” category) have enjoyed the greatest degree of convergence.

Here are some specific observations.

• The Baltic nations are the biggest success stories of the post-communist world. Thanks to pro-market reforms, they have enjoyed the most convergence.
• Romania and Slovakia also experienced big income gains. Romania is in the “most free” group of nations and Slovakia was in the “most free” group until a few years ago.
• Poland has enjoyed the most convergence since 2008. Not coincidentally, that’s a period during which Poland’s economic freedom score climbed from 7.00 to 7.27.
• Bulgaria also merits a positive mention for a big improvement, doubtlessly driven by a huge improvement (from 5.55 to 7.41) in economic freedom since 2000.
• Sadly, Slovenia and Croatia have not experienced much convergence, which presumably is caused in part by their comparatively low rankings for economic liberty.

To be sure, there’s not an ironclad relationship between a nation’s annual score and yearly growth rates.

But, over time, poor nations that want convergence almost certainly won’t get the necessary levels of sustained strong growth without high scores for economic liberty.

P.S. Here’s some related research on this topic from 2017. And here’s a column on the evolution of economic liberty (or lack thereof) in Europe.

Can Brazil’s New President Copy the Chilean Miracle?

Brazil appears to be a tragic example of what happens when societal capital erodes (or never gets established in the first place) and too many people in the country see government as a vehicle for redistribution.

That environment leads to statist policies.

Which presumably helps to explain why Brazil is ranked #144 in Economic Freedom of the World. That’s not as low as some of its neighbors, such as last-place Venezuela (#162) or close-to-last Argentina (#160), but it’s still miserable. The country definitely deserves to be in the “Least Free” group.

Today’s question is whether Brazil also belongs in the “give up hope” group. In other words, has the country passed a “tipping point” of big government?

I’ve previously speculated whether the United States eventually may reach that point, and I definitely think it’s a relevant issue for states like Illinois and nations such as Greece.

A few weeks ago, I would have put Brazil in the same category. But the nation just elected Jair Bolsonaro, a right-populist who promises to shake things up when he takes power.

Mauricio Bento of Brazil’s Instituto Mercado Popular explains that Bolsonaro won in part because of a weak economy.

Most of the coverage from international media has been simplistic and is mostly repeating cliches, such as calling him the “Brazilian Trump”…you might have read about how “terrible” Bolsonaro is, and you might be wondering how he managed to win by such a wide margin. …In the last four years, Brazil has been in a deep economic crisis, suffering from double-digit unemployment rates and a lack of confidence that a recovery is coming.

And in part because his opponent, Fernando Haddad, wanted to undo a handful of recent pro-growth reforms and make Brazil more like Venezuela.

Michel Temer…passed some important reforms, such as the spending cap amendment and the labor law reform… Haddad sought to repeal Temer’s reforms and increase government spending and taxes. This made many business owners and investors support Bolsonaro.

Since I am a big fan of the spending cap that was approved in late 2016, I’m glad that Haddad didn’t win.

But should anybody be happy that Bolsonaro won? I don’t know the answer to that question, but it looks like Brazil is about to have a very good Finance Minister.

The UK-based Financial Times has an encouraging report.

For Brazil’s new finance minister Paulo Guedes, the government of far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro could represent a “Pinochet” moment for Latin America’s largest economy.  Mr Bolsonaro, who won elections last Sunday, ending almost 15 years of leftwing rule, will take over a moribund economy burdened by a bloated public sector when he assumes office on January 1. …The Chilean dictator’s solution was a dose of Milton Friedman-style free market economics from University of Chicago-trained academics. Mr Bolsonaro is considering the same medicine in the form of Mr Guedes, who has a doctorate from Chicago… For supporters of Mr Bolsonaro, the 69-year-old Mr Guedes’ uncompromisingly free market view of the world is the only answer. “Liberals know how to do it,” Mr Guedes once said.

Since pro-market reforms turned Chile into the “Latin Tiger,” let’s hope Guedes is serious.

He definitely has a pro-growth agenda.

Mr Guedes — who first considered joining Mr Bolsonaro’s campaign only last year — has repeatedly said his priority is to end Brazil’s 7 per cent fiscal deficit through privatisations of the country’s 147 state-owned enterprises. ..Mr Guedes’ other plans include a radical simplification of Brazil’s tax system, one of the world’s most convoluted, and reforming the country’s costly pension system, which is threatening to overwhelm the budget.

Sounds like Guedes has the right ideas. Assuming Bolsonaro does what is right for his country (such as much-needed pension reform), Guedes could be the Jose Pinera of Brazil.

Here’s a chart from Economic Freedom of the World. It shows how economic liberalization produced a dramatic increase in freedom between 1975 and 1995. Chile is now ranked #15 for economic liberty. Brazil, by contrast, has slowly lost ground since a period of pro-market reform between 1985 and 2000.

I’ll close with a video that was released before the recent Brazilian election.

It’s directed to mushy-headed young people in America, but it neatly summarizes how Brazil go in trouble.

A great video. I especially appreciate the indirect endorsement of my Golden Rule. The criticisms of former President Lula also are spot on, though I once expressed perverse admiration for him.

In any event, let’s hope President-Elect Bolsonaro give Mr. Guedes free rein to bring economic liberty to Brazil.

P.S. Bolsonaro is good on gun rights, so that’s a positive sign.

An Under-Appreciated Benefit of Lower Tax Rates

There are three reasons why the right kind of tax reform can help the economy grow faster.

1. Lower tax rates give people more incentive to earn income.
2. Less double taxation boosts incentives to save and invest.
3. Fewer loopholes improves incentives for economic efficiency.

Let’s focus on the third item. I don’t like special preferences in the tax code because it’s bad for growth when the tax code lures people into misallocating their labor and capital. Ethanol, for instance, shows how irrational decisions are subsidized by the IRS.

Moreover, I’d rather have smart and capable people in the private sector focusing how to create wealth instead of spending their time figuring out how to manipulate the internal revenue code.

That’s why, in my semi-dream world, I’d like to see a flat tax.* Not only would there be a low rate and no double taxation, but there also would be no distortions.

But in the real world, I’m happy to make partial progress.

That’s why I was happy that last year’s tax bill produced a $10,000 cap for the state and local tax deduction and reduced the value of other write-offs by increasing the standard deduction. Yes, I’d like to wipe out the deductions for home mortgage interest, charitable giving, and state and local taxes, but a limit is better than nothing.

And I’m also happy that lower tax rates are an indirect way of reducing the value of loopholes and other preferences.

To understand the indirect benefits of low tax rates, consider this new report from the Washington Post. Unsurprisingly, we’re discovering that a less onerous death tax means less demand for clever tax lawyers.

A single aging rich person would often hire more than a dozen people — accountants, estate administrators, insurance agents, bank attorneys, financial planners, stockbrokers — to make sure they paid as little as possible in taxes when they died. But David W. Klasing, an estate tax attorney in Orange County, Calif., said he’s seen a sharp drop in these kinds of cases. The steady erosion of the federal estate tax, shrunk again by the Republican tax law last fall, has dramatically reduced the number of Americans who have to worry about the estate tax — as well as work for those who get paid to worry about it for them, Klasing said. In 2002, about 100,000 Americans filed estate tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service, according to the IRS. In 2018, only 5,000 taxpayers are expected to file these returns… “You had almost every single tax professional trying to grab as much of that pot as they could,” Klasing said. “Now almost everybody has had to find other work.”

Needless to say, I’m delighted that these people are having to “find other work.”

By the way, I’m not against these people. They were working to protect families from an odious form of double taxation, which was a noble endeavor.

I’m simply stating that I’m glad there’s less need for their services.

Charles “Skip” Fox, president of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, said he frequently hears of lawyers shifting their focus away from navigating the estate tax, and adds that there has been a downturn in the number of young attorneys going into the estate tax field. Jennifer Bird-Pollan, who teaches the estate tax to law students at the University of Kentucky, said that nearly a decade ago her classes were packed with dozens of students. Now, only a handful of students every so often may be interested in the subject or pursuing it as a career. “There’s about as much interest in [the class] law and literature,” Pollan said. “The very, very wealthy are still hiring estate tax lawyers, but basically people are no longer paying $1,000 an hour for advice about this stuff. They don’t need it.”

Though I am glad one lawyer is losing business.

Stacey Schlitz, a tax attorney in Nashville, said when she got out of law school about a decade ago roughly 80 percent of her clients were seeking help with their estate taxes. Now, less than 1 percent are, she said, adding that Tennessee’s state inheritance tax was eliminated by 2016. “It is disappointing that this area of my business dried up so that such a small segment of society could get even richer,” Schlitz said in an email.

I hope every rich person in Nashville sees this story and steers clear of Ms. Schlitz, who apparently wants her clients to be victimized by government.

Now let’s shift to the business side of the tax code and consider another example showing why lower tax rates produce more sensible behavior.

Now that the corporate tax rate has been reduced, American companies no longer have as much desire to invest in Ireland.

US investment in Ireland declined by €45bn ($51bn) in 2017, in another sign that sweeping tax reforms introduced by US president Donald Trump have impacted the decisions of American multinational companies. …Economists have been warning that…Trump’s overhaul of the US tax code, which aimed to reduce the use of foreign low-tax jurisdictions by US companies, would dent inward investment in Ireland. …In November 2017, Trump went so far as to single out Ireland, saying it was one of several countries that corporations used to offshore profits. “For too long our tax code has incentivised companies to leave our country in search of lower tax rates. It happens—many, many companies. They’re going to Ireland. They’re going all over,” he said.

Incidentally, I’m a qualified fan of Ireland’s low corporate rate. Indeed, I hope Irish lawmakers lower the rate in response to the change in American law.

And I’d like to see the US rate fall even further since it’s still too high compared to other nations.

Heck, it would be wonderful to see tax competition produce a virtuous cycle of rate reductions all over the world.

But that’s a topic I’ve addressed before.

Today’s lesson is simply that lower tax rates reduce incentives to engage in tax planning. I’ll close with simple thought experiment showing the difference between a punitive tax system and reasonable tax system.

• 60 percent tax rate – If you do nothing, you only get to keep 40 cents of every additional dollar you earn. But if you find some sort of deduction, exemption, or exclusion, you increase your take-home pay by an additional 60 cents. That’s a good deal even if the tax preference loses 30 cents of economic value.
• 20 percent tax rate – If you do nothing, you get to keep 80 cents of every dollar you earn. With that reasonable rate, you may not even care about seeking out deductions, exemptions, and exclusions. And if you do look for a tax preference, you certainly won’t pick one where you lose anything close to 20 cents of economic value.

The bottom line is that lower tax rates are a “two-fer.” They directly help economic growth by increasing incentives to earn income and they indirectly help economic growth by reducing incentives to engage in inefficient tax planning.

*My semi-dream world is a flat tax. My dream world is when the federal government is so small (as America’s Founders envisioned) that there’s no need for any broad-based tax.

P.S. It’s not the focus of today’s column, but since I talked about loopholes, it’s worth pointing out that they should be properly defined. Sadly, that simple task is too challenging for the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office (or even the Republican party).

The Most Important Ballot Initiatives of 2018

The mid-term elections take place on Tuesday and the crowd in DC is focused on who will control the House and Senate. I’ll make my (sometimes dubious, sometimes accurate) congressional predictions next Monday.

The goal today is to call attention to the key initiatives and referendums that also will occur next week.

As a matter of logic, I can’t really argue with the notion that voting is a waste of time. Nonetheless, I hope the right people in certain states will be illogical.

As far as I’m concerned, the most important contest is in Colorado, where voters are being asked to replace the state’s flat tax with a discriminatory system of graduated rates. Here’s how CNBC describes the awful proposal.

Amendment 73 would break up its current flat tax of 4.63 percent, adding four new individual income tax brackets. Taxpayers earning less than $150,000 would see no change; at $150,001, a new rate of 5 percent would kick in, with a new top rate of 8.25 percent on taxable income over $500,000. The measure also includes a boost in the corporate income rate (from 4.63 percent to 6 percent).

Since I’m a fan of the flat tax (combined with TABOR, it helps to explain the state’s prosperity), I obviously hope voters reject this self-destructive scheme to turn Colorado into California.

The second-most important referendum is probably the battle over school choice in Arizona. Here’s how Reason characterizes that battle.

…since we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that governments should mug us in order to fund an army of loyal employees and their fumbling attempts to hammer knowledge into our kids’ heads, attempts to provide widely accessible alternatives to government schooling inevitably involve diverting some of those stolen funds. And diverting those funds requires political battles against entrenched allies of the state monopoly—such as that playing out in Arizona over an effort to expand a school voucher program. …Last year, lawmakers voted to expand eligibility for the empowerment scholarship accounts program to all students, with participation capped at around 30,000 kids. But opponents of school choice won a battle to put the program’s expansion on the ballot as Proposition 305. …As of last week, polling on Proposition 305 conducted by Suffolk University and the Arizona Republic shows a plurality of Arizona voters (41 percent) supporting expansion of the program, with 32 percent opposed and 27 percent undecided.

The third-most important referendum is actually four different measures. There are proposals to expand Medicaid in Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, and Utah.

The Wall Street Journal editorializes about these dangerous initiatives.

One of the worst deals in state spending is coming to a red state near you, and that’s expanding Medicaid to adult men above the poverty line. …Expansion extends the benefit to prime-age adults without children up to 138% of the poverty line. The feds pay more than 90% of the cost for the new beneficiaries… Every state that has expanded Medicaid has blown the budget by spending more money on more people. The cost overruns are more than double on average. …Medicaid is already the fastest growing line item in nearly every state in the country. …The idea that the feds will continue to pick up 90% of the tab forever is fantasy. The GOP has vowed to equalize the funding formula and make states pay closer to 30% to 50% like they do for traditional Medicaid. States shouldn’t assume that Democrats will be more merciful when they want to pay for something else and stick more of the Medicaid bill on states.

The fourth-most important measure to watch is a referendum for a big carbon tax in the state of Washington. The Wall Street Journal opined about this revenue grab.

Two years ago nearly 60% of Washington voters rejected a ballot initiative to impose a “revenue neutral” carbon tax. Green groups opposed the referendum because it wouldn’t generate money for environmental largess. …Liberals have now fixed what they thought was the fatal flaw of the first referendum—namely, revenue neutrality. This year’s initiative would impose a $15 per ton carbon “fee” that would increase by $2 per year. …the $2.3 billion in revenue it is projected to generate over the next five years would mostly be earmarked for “clean air and energy” programs… But revenues are fungible, and the carbon tax proceeds would invariably finance government spending in other areas. …The tax would raise gas prices by 13 cents a gallon in 2020 and 59 cents a gallon by 2035. Washington currently has the third highest gas prices in the country after Hawaii and California… National Economic Research Associates estimates that the tax would cost Washington households on average $440 in 2020 and would reduce state economic growth by 0.4% over the next two years. …liberals care more about increasing tax revenue to spend than they do about reducing emissions.

This is exactly why I warn against a national carbon tax. No matter what proponents say, it will wind up being an excuse to finance even more wasteful spending.

Last but not least, our fifth-most important ballot initiative is from California, which has a very misguided referendum that would allow more rent control in the state. Michael Tanner has an appropriate description of this scheme in National Review.

But the prize for perhaps the worst ballot idea goes — naturally — to California, which will vote on whether to allow local communities to impose rent control. Approval can be guaranteed to benefit the wealthy and middle class while reducing the availability of rental housing for the poor. It’s almost as if the measure’s supporters had never glimpsed an economics textbook.

For what it’s worth, one of the state’s Senators, Kamala Harris, has a national plan to wreck housing markets.

Here are some additional initiatives on taxes which merit a brief mention, particularly since they may have an impact on competitiveness.

• Arizona has an initiative to prevent politicians from imposing any new sales taxes on services.
• There’s a measure to increase tobacco taxes in South Dakota.
• In California, there’s a referendum to repeal a recent hike in the gas tax and to require future increases to be approved by voters.
• There’s also an initiative in the Golden State to boost the sales tax to finance more transportation spending.
• In Florida, where there’s an initiative to require a two-thirds vote of the legislature to increase revenue.
• Oregon voters will choose whether to impose a requirement that three-fifths of the legislature vote for indirect revenue increases.
• North Carolina voters will decide whether to lower the maximum-allowable tax rate from 10 percent to 7 percent.

From a libertarian perspective, I’ll also be paying attention to a measure to restrict gun rights in the state of Washington, as well as an initiative to legalize marijuana in Michigan.

There are initiatives to increase the minimum wage in Arkansas (to $11.00 per hour) and Missouri (to $12.00 per hour). If they are approved, the consequences will be both negative and predictable.

Saving America’s Retirement System and Providing Real Middle-Class Tax Relief

President Trump thinks he can boost Republicans next Tuesday by promising a new round of tax relief for the middle class.

I’m skeptical of his sincerity, as noted in this segment from a recent interview, but I also warn that his proposed tax cut is impractical because Republicans have done a lousy job on spending. And I also point out that it is ironic that Trump is urging lower taxes for the middle class when his protectionist tariffs (trade taxes) are hurting the same people.

At first, I wasn’t going to bother writing about this topic for the simple reason that Trump isn’t serious (if he was, he wouldn’t have meekly allowed the big spenders to bust the spending caps).

But then I saw that Tom Giovanetti of the Institute for Policy Innovation wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal explaining how reforming Social Security would be great news for lower- and middle-income taxpayers.

…44% of Americans no longer pay any federal income tax at all, and many more pay very little. …On the other hand, low- and middle-income workers do send the government a large share of their earnings in the form of payroll taxes. That same family of four pays $12,240 at the 15.3% combined rate for Social Security and Medicare. If you want to cut taxes for middle-class and low-income workers, that’s where you have to do it. …instead of…a payroll-tax cut of 4% of income, why not redirect that same 4% into personal retirement accounts for every worker? …With no decline in disposable income, American workers would suddenly be investing for retirement at market rates in accounts they own and control, instead of relying on Congress to keep Social Security solvent.

Not only would personal retirement accounts be good for workers, they also would help deal with the looming entitlement crisis.

America’s entitlements are on a path to collapse, and few politicians—including Mr. Trump—have an appetite to do anything about it. When the crisis comes, no tax increase will be big enough to solve the problem. Knowing the U.S. government is eventually going to fudge its commitment to retirees, policy makers should at least give workers a fair chance to amass the savings they will need to support themselves. The back-door solution to the entitlement crisis is to make workers wealthy. Will you worry about Social Security’s solvency or a Medicare collapse if you have more than enough money in a real retirement account to buy a generous annuity and cover your health insurance?

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the right approach. Both for workers and the country.

To be sure, I don’t think it’s likely since Trump opposes sensible entitlement reform. But Tom’s column at least provides a teaching moment.

I’m not sure when we’ll have a chance to address this simmering crisis. But if you’re wondering whether changes are necessary, check out this chart I put together earlier this year showing Social Security’s annual shortfall (adjusted for inflation, so we’re comparing apples-to-apples).

P.S. This video has more details on the benefits of personal retirement accounts.

P.P.S. And this video shows why the left’s plan to “fix” Social Security would be so destructive.