- Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax it? Payroll taxes discourage creating jobs. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households.
I would say among academic economist you would find many people who prefer a progressive income tax to a consumption tax. This is just from my bachelor of economics survey of progressive minded academic economist class lectures, but I wouldn't be surprised if it isn't a somewhat common view. The rest of the list I think would be supported by most economist. I think you would be surprised how many would say something along the lines of "Well that sounds theoretically sound to me, but I am not really a specialist in XXXXXX economics and you would really want to look at a lot of data before you made a decision about it". All of my best professors took this line with stuff that was outside of their specialty, probably because they didn't like hearing people make sweeping statements about the stuff they were experts in from people who lacked understanding about the trade offs of any given policy. It seems like very few politicians realize or admit that every position they hold has both a cost and a benefit. The Tea Partiers have a point, but they have no idea of the downsides, same goes with the Occupiers. It's a big part of the disillusionment that comes along with winning policy battles, you get your way, but it ain't all gravy.
but if one takes the folk theory as There is a point were lowering taxes or for the rich specifically leads to an increase in revenues. One can find regions where that is true. My mathematical model which like all models should not be confused with fact suggests that the point when this Laffer balderdash becomes true is when growth is well above 10%. So maybe the chinese could benefit?