Growth is Good: Obama edition

Ezra Klein may not think much of WaPo columnist Sebastian Mallaby, but I've gotta say, the man occasionally comes out with a truly excellent column. Here is the latest example. Mallaby makes the point that Obama's policy plans are a lot more favorable for economic growth than anything the Republicans have to offer:

The real pro-growth candidate in this campaign looks to be Barack Obama...[The Republican] party's standard economic pitch has become less and less relevant...[W]ith the top [tax] rate at 35 percent today, [cutting tax rates] makes less of a difference [than in Reagan's time]. Given the yawning budget deficit and the coming demographic crunch, tax cuts aren't affordable anyway.

The same goes for deregulation. [T]he "price-and-entry" regulations that used to cosset [transportation] industries have long since gone, and remaining regulation is harder to demonize. We are left with government rules to protect the environment, check the safety of medicines and prevent systemic financial crises. These rules are generally helpful. There's nothing "pro-growth" about bashing them.

The same is approximately true for trade...Today most trade barriers have been removed...Provided that Obama finds a way of crawling back from his embarrassing talk of reopening NAFTA, the gap between his trade views and McCain's doesn't much matter.

So the real litmus tests on growth lie elsewhere: in policies toward education, basic science, skilled immigration, infrastructure and the grotesque tort system...the old Republican playbook of tax cuts, deregulation and lower barriers to trade misses the real challenges.

Obama wants to double federal spending on basic scientific research. He wants to make broadband access universal. He has proposed an infrastructure bank to pump $60 billion into broken-down highways, ports and so on. If (and it's a big if) Congress could be prevented from turning this last proposal into a pork-fest, the growth payoff could be substantial....

Obama is the pro-growth candidate. [all emphasis mine]

Mallaby doesn't use the economists' phrase, but what he's talking about are public production goods. Science, education (i.e. "human capital investment"), and infrastructure are things that our economy needs to grow, but they are things that private companies simply will never provide enough of on their own. That means that government action is essential for maximum economic growth. Republicans have denied the very existence of these public goods for decades, and we've suffered as a result. Obama, hopefully, will put things to rights.