And other things. But on public finance, he writes,
The central goal of a growth-oriented tax system is to raise the revenue needed to fund necessary government spending at minimal distortion to the economy, and in particular minimizing the sorts of distortions that impede the growth process.
This is a very basic statement, and I believe that it would be difficult to come up with a good economic argument against it. What it implies is that using the tax code for social engineering is entirely wrong. Subsidies should be subsidies, not tax credits or tax deductions.
But the implications go further. Poor people face very high implicit marginal tax rates, because of the hard cut-offs on benefit programs. As you know, I favor consolidating all benefit programs into a single flexible benefit taxed at about a 20 to 25 percent rate. Also, taxes discourage work (the payroll tax) and thrift (the corporate income tax and other taxes on capital).
There is still room for disagreement about the trade-off between redistribution through taxation and economic growth. But there are many tax reforms on which economists could agree, politics aside.
Is there any serious person (HT: Paul Krugman) who does not favor a consumption tax (with rebates to lower income households) to replace all other taxes?
What do you mean? You either are or aren’t using “serious people” in the Krugman sense incorrectly and it makes your question rather nonsensicial in both ways.
Redistribution policies, namely an expansion of the safety net and higher taxes to pay for it, always, everywhere reduce economic growth. People work because they want something the fruits of labor provide, or to prevent bad things from happening because they do not have fruits of labor. Either way the better safety net or the higher taxes to pay for it discourages work, which is what economic growth is about.