Stagefright: The Ben Carson Edition

    I got a phone call the other morning from the Ben Carson campaign on my cell phone (wth).  I thought I was prepared for just such an occurrence, but I totally froze up.  I couldn't breathe without huffing, and my lower back tensed up and I felt like someone had kicked me in the kidneys.  The fellow on the phone asked me if I'd be willing to consider voting for Carson in the primaries coming up next Tuesday, and I mumbled something about being a Sanders guy.  He said, oh, okay, but would I at least look at Dr. Carson's platform.
   Now, what I would have liked to have said - what I should have said - was that, yes, I would definitely consider voting for Dr. Carson, but not for reasons that he, the caller, would appreciate.  As a RINO, I really don't want any of the current Republican candidates to win the general election, so I when I vote in the Republican primary, I would be voting for someone who had no chance of winning the general election.  Up until recently there were too many choices.
    In the beginning, there were seventeen republican candidates: sixteen crazy people and George Pataki.  Governor Pataki dropped out early on - not crazy enough to get any support from his party's voters - and, among the crazy people, that left two who had a chance in the general election, Jeb! Bush, and John Kasich.  Jeb! turned out to be beige at its brightest intensity, and had to drop out under the glare of Trump's neon pink.  Eleven others dropped out along the way, and now there are five.  Trump and Cruz are just too scary to contemplate, so that leaves Rubio and Carson.  Rubio is still considered a real candidate in spite of not having reached puberty yet, so Carson is the likeliest to get my vote.
    As I said, the campaign caller would probably not have appreciated that response.  But He did ask me to look at Dr. Carson's platform. Okay.

    I can skip over some of the more entertaining things, like his beliefs about the pyramids, or how much of his personal story turned out to be fabricated, or what his own advisors think of him.  I'm not really a foreign policy guy.  His views on climate change are simultaneously disturbing and amusing.  But my main interest is in his economic plan.  I'm not impressed.

"Under my flat tax, everyone pays the same percentage of income with no deductions, loopholes or shelters. "

    Well, we can pretty much just stop right there.  Flat tax plans are inherently regressive, which means they raise taxes on people who don't have any money while lowering taxes for people who do.  And then there are the massive budget deficits.
    Dr. Carson is basing his plan on the concept of tithing, starting with a 10% rate for everybody.  “You make $10 billion, you pay a billion. You make $10, you pay one.”  (Ultimately the rate on $10 turned out not to be so.)
    During the third Republican debate, Dr. Carson was put on the spot when moderator Becky Quick pointed out that his tax plan would leave a $1.1 trillion dollar hole in the budget. "You would have to cut government by about 40 percent to make it work with a $1.1 trillion hole."  (Politifact says that number would actually be 30%.)  She asked how would that work. He replied that tithing was just an analogy, and that the rate would actually be closer to 15 percent.  When he finally released his plan, the actual number was 14.9%. Carson added that he’d fill the gap through "strategic cutting."
    The Congressional Budget office already projects a $7.2 trillion cumulative deficit over the next 10 years in addition to the deficit Carson's plan would create, so Carson would have to come up with $10 trillion dollars in savings over those ten years to reach a balanced budget.  So, what about that strategic cutting?  He told Marketplace’s Kai Rysdal he plans to direct every government agency to cut 3% or 4% from their budget.  In order for that to work, that 4% figure would also have to apply to Social Security and the military, though the military is not part of the plan.
    When his tax plan was finally revealed, it also showed that in addition to the deficit producing flat tax, he also intends to get rid of taxes on capital gains and dividends, the estate tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax, while allowing businesses to immediately write off the full cost of investments.  All of this is, of course, based on the Supply-Side myth that tax cuts produce growth.
    In spite of all this, I don't believe that his economic plan is the reason he's doing so badly in the polls.  After all his economics only put him on par with his three main rivals (although Ted Cruz is still considered the worst.)  And he believes a lot of the same erroneous ideas that are common among several of my Facebook friends, including my Dad.  Jeff Spross discusses one of those ideas in an article for The Week:

Consider a few quotes Carson gave to Jim Tankersley at The Washington Post: "By the time I was a young attending neurosurgeon, I was really struck by the number of indigent people I saw coming in who were on public assistance, and who were not working," Carson said. "They were able-bodied people, and they were not working. I thought, this is out of whack." This comes amidst a longer lament by Carson about how government aid encourages dependency, and how America has failed to create an "environment that encourages entrepreneurial risk-taking."

There's a pretty simple assumption sitting beneath these observations: Namely, that jobs are available for people, if they were only willing to take the initiative. This idea — that jobs are just magically "there" — is incredibly common in American politics. (Here's a New York Times columnist recently indulging in it.) But this idea is also dead wrong. There is, in fact, a set supply of jobs out there. The macroeconomic policies we collectively choose as a society can certainly increase the set number of jobs, if we choose correctly. But if we choose poorly, there won't be enough jobs for everyone who needs one, no matter how hard we may "encourage" work.

 So I don't believe that his standing in the polls has anything to do with important issues, but regardless, it does help me determine who I will be voting for.  Mr. Carson, I have looked at your platform.  It's really really terrible.  But you've got my vote.
    Or not.