Tax Reform? Tax Tinkering?

We had a couple of public relations events yesterday that claimed to be the roll outs of the administrations tax reform efforts.

Since the amount of detail provided was virtually nothing, its hard to say whether the plan is going to accomplish very much.

There were some broad outlines which reduce the number of brackets, reduce the corporate tax rate increase the standard deduction and reduce some other deductions.

Of course the wealthy's estate tax is to be eliminated and a few other perks are there to help them, since they are so needy.

Now this isn't tax reform, its tax tinkering.

Tax reform would address the underlying system and change it to achieve some goal

The goal of this plan seems to be to reduce corporate taxes and tinker a bit with everything else.

Some will benefit, some will lose and at the end of the day the Government will collect less taxes.

Now since at this point spending isn't going down, that means the deficit will increase and the national debt will get worse.

The rejoinder to that is that the reduced taxes will lead to a bounce in economic activity that will increase taxes even at lower rates.

That theory has never worked in the past and isn't going to work in the future, primarily because the spurt in economic growth can't happen without a big increase in demand.

The basis or our economy had become consumer spending and increasing that is the only real way to grow our economy.

The amount of money going to consumers isn't enough to move the needle meaningfully.

Meanwhile the area that needs additional spending is infrastructure.  That means more Government spending and more debt.

I need to see the details on this tax tinkering plan to see how it actually impacts people and corporations, but if you just want hoopla you got the old razzle dazzle yesterday.

Feels swampy.