What in the world are you talking about?
"......The charismatic Mr. Trump's economic platform is pure Jabberwocky. As Megan McCardle pointed out:
Trump's economic policy isn't really a policy; it consists of claiming magical abilities to reclaim the jobs that foreigners have stolen from us, and a ritual genuflection toward lower taxes. All politics contains some element of this, of course: Just listen to the Democratic debaters on stage claiming that bankers nearly singlehandedly destroyed the American economy, and that ambitious programs can be financed largely by raising taxes on a tiny group of ultrawealthy people. But this is combined with some vision of what the economy should look like, resting on moral and empirical premises about fairness, justice, opportunity and equality. Trump's argument is pretty much entirely "strangers stole your stuff, and I'm going to make them give it back, or at least keep them from stealing any more."
Hey. We voters are a lot smarter than the candidates seem to think! At least Trump is campaigning on prosperity. That said, as I pointed out here Trump's proposed tax "reform" has been neutrally scored by the Tax Foundation as a $10T deficit bomb (and skewed toward the wealthy). Hello Tea Party?
As to his monetary policy, as I pointed out here, Mr. Trump criticized Fed Chair Janet Yellen before she raised the discount rate for failing to raise interest rates while, in the next breath, claiming that raising interest rates was a recipe for "a recession-slash-depression." Come in, Houston: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Meanwhile, Cruz's proposal to replace the tax code with a 10% flat tax (with ample exemptions for working families), coupled with a Business Transfer Tax, has been scored by the neutral Tax Foundation as close to deficit neutral and beneficial to every level of worker, from us Gilligans to the Thurston Howell IIIs (and Loveys), across-the-board. Very Reaganesque and unsurprisingly so, having been architected by Arthur Laffer, one of the premier minds behind the Reagan tax rate cuts.
On monetary policy, Cruz has called for the gold standard, which I have called a very good idea and the best idea - for restoring prosperity - in the presidential debate. Cruz would be insulated from attacks by Trump because Trump has spoken sympathetically, albeit ignorantly, about the gold standard. Trump, on WMUR last year:
WE USED TO HAVE A VERY SOLID COUNTRY BECAUSE IT WAS BASED ON A GOLD STANDARD FOR IT WE DO NOT HAVE THAT ANYMORE. THERE IS SOMETHING VERY NICE ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF THAT. IT WOULD BE VERY HARD TO DO AT THIS POINT AND ONE OF THE PROBLEMS IS WE DO NOT HAVE THE GOLD. OTHER PLACES HAVE THE GOLD.
To indulge in the unseemly expedient of facts for a moment, America has, and by far, the largest stock of monetary gold in the world. Moreover, the gold standard does not even require particularly large stocks of gold. Prof. Lawrence White, of George Mason University, definitively has put the "not enough gold" myth about the gold standard, among many other such myths, to rest.
Trump's promise of a worldwide-depression-inducing tariff would be another albatross around his neck if only he were forcefully held to account. Such a Depression would not merely be Great. It would be The Greatest Depression Ever!
On taxes, money, and trade Cruz's proposals are sensible and defensible. Trump's ideas do not hold up even to casual scrutiny. Trump has a brutally exposed flank right in the heart of what we voters most yearn for (according to all the polls): Prosperity.........."