Decided to make another public policy list as my Modern Deal was well received. There is a bit of overlap with a few policies from the previous post, but these are mostly unrelated otherwise. Without further ado, here is a list of what I believe to be the most important policy changes (from a largely US centric standpoint) for boosting economic freedom and growth.

State & Local

Note that some of these are already set in place in some states

Housing and Land Use

• Replace property taxes with a Land Value Tax (LVT)
• Deregulate Zoning significantly (as I’ve said before, Japanese levels would be a good target)
• Reduce the cruft of permitting and shorten approval time to under a month and digitize the whole process
• Ban rent control
• Lift bans on short term rentals

Occupational Licensing

• Eliminate licenses not pertaining to health or safety concerns (i.e painter, florist, hair stylist)
• Full licensure reciprocity across state lines
• Liberalize requirements in the remaining professions as to ensure no major impediments to entry
• Scrap recurring renewal fees

Healthcare

• Eliminate Certificate of Need Laws (which are present in 35 states)
• Enact scope of practice reform
• Eliminate all barriers of using telemedicine
• Allow for over the counter access to birth control
• Remove any barriers to charity care
• Allow direct primary care facilities to operate
• Legalize (but closely regulate) the sale of Kidneys to address the massive Kidney shortage

Taxes

• Switch retail sales taxes to a broad based VAT
• Harmonize alcohol excise taxes
• Eliminate film tax credits
• For states with a flat income tax, supplant with an LVT
• Eliminate tax breaks and other “economic development incentives”
• Eliminate itemization

Administration

• Instate a regulatory reset process for states to modernize rules in a consensus driven manner
• Provide public hotlines for regulatory assistance
• Require cost-benefit analysis of new regulations like at the federal level
• Create a regulatory budget to monitor the total economic cost of regulations (possibly tie it to some proportion of gross state product)
• Eliminate automatic damage settlements for torts and lower fees substantially for infractions that don’t cause notable financial, physical, or mental damage
• Move to digital, one stop permitting for local businesses

Misc

• Legalize recreational Cannabis
• Lower child to staff ratios for childcare facilities where appropriate to reduce the enormous cost of childcare
• Ban localities from restricting ride sharing services; just implement a congestion tax for all vehicular transportation
• Abolish all sports subsidies
• Allow for home alcohol deliveries and sales on Sunday
• Eliminate restrictions on gig and freelance work
• Allow all producers to sell direct to consumers (i.e distilleries, car manufacturers)
• Cap the amount of revenue municipalities can take in fees and fines (perhaps 5%)
• Harmonize state food laws with those of the FDA and eliminate ones unrelated to safety

Federal

Environmental

• Introduce a border adjusted carbon tax that increases over inflation every year and then
  • Eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies and eliminate the solar and wind tax credits
  • Scrap the CAFE fuel standards
• Streamline and shorten the time for approval for NEPA environmental assessments
• Create an exemption in EPA drilling regulation for the installation of carbon sequestration units

Agriculture

• End most agricultural subsidies
• Reform and reduce total spending on crop insurance, but more adequately target small and medium sized farms
• More coordination between the USDA and the EPA on regulations affecting agriculture

Immigration

• Eliminate all quotas
• Reduce entry requirements to only a disease check, background check, and a state of intent; fast track anyone with a job offer or acceptance into a school
• Create a Canada-New Zealand-Australia-UK-US freedom of movement and economic zone

Healthcare

• Regulatory reciprocity with all first world countries on drugs and medical devices
• Move to a dual track system of “free to choose medicine”
• Have the FDA properly define what safe means and what effective means
• Price transparency of all medical procedures
• Fully Legalize Cannabis
• Reschedule psychedelics to Schedule 2 at a minimum, fund research, and allow doctors to appropriately prescribe them to help treat mental health ailments

Aviation

• Deregulate slot allocation by moving to a market based auction system
• Lift the ban on supersonic flight

Taxes

• Eliminate all import tariffs
• Eliminate income taxes and replace the meat of the federal tax system with the X-tax (progressive consumption tax)
  • Retain only a standard deduction on the wage side of the X-Tax
• Return free filing

Intellectual Property

• Shorten the maximum duration of any non-permissive copyright to 12 years
• Shorten maximum patent duration on tangible goods to 12 years and 5 years for intangible goods
• Eliminate Software patents
• Utilize prize systems over patents when possible
• Instate a creativity tax credit that tax payers can spend as they choose in exchange for recipients openly licensing their content
• Fund medical R&D upfront in place of patents

Commercial Freedom

• Reform the National Flood Insurance Program to stop providing heavily subsidized coverage in at risk areas and boost private competition in the market
• Eliminate all non-tariff trade barriers
• Adopt Sam Bowman’s n+1 regulator for startups that would supersede other regulators and issue a fixed term license that would have the initial phase of testing product viability and bringing it to market under this regulator
• Reduce transactions costs in spectrum markets by increasing boundary sizes of license areas and introducing a Harberger tax

Financial

• Eliminate Dodd-Frank and replace it with Limited Purpose Banking or the Minneapolis Too Big to Fail Plan

Labor Market

• Eliminate the minimum wage and move to the Ghent system

Misc

• Switch to NGDP targeting over inflation targeting
• Eliminate the Jones Act
• Unleash a massive increase in public R&D funding, eventually reaching 2.5% of GDP (currently at 0.71% as of 2018)