Hamill: Roosevelt warned us about haphazard planning. Are we listening?

Because I live in the tax world, I have heard much about the debates surrounding the proposals to continue the 2017 tax law, with a few other tax cuts thrown in.

This will be a budget buster. The proposals have some offsets, weighted heavily toward social safety net programs.

The 2017 legislation slashed tax rates but also introduced new tax benefits. Proponents told us of the economic benefits to be realized from these changes.

We were told that cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% would allow corporations to hire more workers and purchase more equipment.

Immediate tax deductions for long-lived equipment and other assets were said to create incentives for more productive capital in the economy.

The 2017 legislation would then lead to more jobs and more capital, and we were told that it would cause a jump in the growth rate of gross domestic product.

True believers even told us that the tax cuts would lead to deficit reduction. Yes, we would all be better off because of this legislation.

Has there been any effort to test the propositions of those who sold the 2017 law to us and who want to continue that experiment? I have seen none.

I’m not a policy expert. So, I want to turn the rest of this column over to Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a former four-time president of the United States.

Roosevelt gave a speech at Oglethorpe University in May 1932. This was about 10 months before he started his first term as president.

The country had just come out of the “Roaring ‘20s,” but had also experienced the stock market crash of 1929.

People knew that something had to be done. But what? At that time, there seemed to be no plan. Not even a plan of how to plan.

The following quotation marks identify Roosevelt’s words. I pick and choose from his speech.

“As you have viewed the world of which you are about to become … I have no doubt that you have been impressed by its chaos, its lack of plan.”

“We cannot review carefully the history of our industrial advance without being struck with its haphazardness.”

“Much of it, I believe, could have been prevented by greater foresight and by a larger measure of social planning.”

“Forces as have been developed in recent years reside to a dangerous degree in groups having special interests in our economic order, interests which do not coincide with the interests of the nation as a whole.”

“Think carefully of the vast sums of capital or credit which in the past decade have been devoted to unjustified enterprises.”

“Do what we may have to do to inject life into our ailing economic order, we cannot make it endure for long unless we can bring about a wiser, more equitable distribution of the national income.”

“Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees.”

“Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives.”

“True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.”

“Do not confuse objectives with methods. When the nation becomes substantially united in favor of planning the broad objectives of civilization, then true leadership must unite thought behind definite methods.”

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.”

“It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

So ends the Roosevelt portion of this column. I do not see any current plan other than to continue the 2017 law.

I see no assessment of the efficiency of the 2017 law in meeting its claimed economic benefits. This is not bold, persistent experimentation.

Surely not all of the 2017 law was a success, even to its proponents. But we never tested any of its provisions. We hear nothing of its successes and failures.

Tax policy now seems driven by inertia. There are no forces being applied to it that would cause a change in direction. So, like Roosevelt, I am “struck by its haphazardness.”