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Today’s Sermon: Whose Compassion?
Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10Nor shall you glean your vineyard, Nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 23)
A story: “In the middle of the Great Depression, the mayor of New York City was the five foot tall son of Italian-Jewish immigrants, Fiorello H. LaGuardia. LaGuardia was a seriously energetic little guy. It was not unusual for him to ride with the firefighters, raid with the police, or take field trips with the kids from the city orphanage. On a bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself—-something a quirk in New York City law enabled him to do.
Housing policy should be at the heart of America’s economic policy debates. Housing was a catalyst for the Financial Crisis. Housing costs constrain America’s most productive cities and regions. Housing tax breaks distort the economy and reduce government tax revenues by at least $70 billion annually. If you’re interested in the US economy growing faster in the next decade than it has in the past decade, then smart housing policy would be a key accelerant. Housing reform is a key structural reform to creating sustained fast growth in the decades to come.
My top public policy priority would not be big, fat tax cuts for the superrich. (At the same time, I don’t want to see marginal rates drift ever higher.)
In 2014 
The incoming Trump administration doesn’t seem the sort much concerned about “consensus” economic opinion or what so-called experts think. For instance: One recent 
Dear Governor Brown;
Hillary Clinton has revealed further details of her plan for the fiscal future of the United States. Her vision addresses both sides of the equation: how and from whom taxes should be raised; and how and for whom they should be spent. Her plan is squarely within the progressive tradition. She insists that “The middle class needs a raise,” and that the federal government will pay for the raise by increasing taxes on the top one percent, who once again must be made to pay their “fair share.”
On August 30, the European Commission issued a blockbuster 
The Tax Foundation 
One of the disadvantages of a complex tax code is that a great deal of human mental effort is wasted trying to figure it out. If a person has ten productive hours a day, any time spent doing busywork is a direct reduction on the amount of time that can be spent doing something productive that might actually create wealth (which, for those so inclined, could be taxed). This is one reason why I was so impressed during my recent visit to Singapore: The government there makes everything easy for productive citizens. The border crossing takes seconds, taxes are simple, even renewing a driver’s license happens as fast or faster than anywhere else in the world. All of this frees up the productive citizen to go and get some real work done.