Our vice president’s clueless Kamalanomics platform thus far recalls the aphorism incorrectly attributed (as most such attributions are) to Samuel Johnson critiquing an aspiring writer’s work: It’s both good and original. But what’s good is not original, and what’s original is not good.

Here’s an “original” idea: Take an overheated, unaffordable market (housing), and a probably stagflationary economy with a petering job market and still glowing embers of underlying inflation, and dump perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars of newly printed money into it.

One could elaborate, but the folly should be fairly clear on its face. Inflation would not just heat up in the housing market, but since money is fungible, throughout the economy.

Another “original” thought: tax “unrealized gains.” Ponder that one a minute. If gains are “unrealized,” they are by definition not gains. Such “gains” are speculative, at best, because – news flash! – values fluctuate.

Ask anyone who (like this scribe) has recently tried to move a property at a prevailing appreciated price, only to see the market suddenly crater.

In short, the proposal is an oxymoron. And take out the “oxy” part to get an idea of the economic intelligence of its progenitor.

But hey: There’s a third notion that has some potential if properly implemented, meaning not implemented at all as Ms. Harris has proposed.

Price controls.

No, silly, not on food producers and grocery chains with their one-point-something-or-other profit margins. 

On today’s real price gougers: if you will excuse the pun, the “grubber-ment.”

On its face, the “price” of government – federal revenues – has gone up from $4.05 trillion in fiscal 2021 to an estimated $5.09 trillion this year. That’s a 25.7% hike, representing approximately $3,116 more a year for every woman, child and man in the US of A. 

But wait! There’s more. The price of government is also reflected in the effect of flooding the market with dollars created out of whole cloth, not covered by revenues, that is, deficits, which have risen from $1.38 trillion in fiscal 2022 to a projected $2 trillion this year, a 45% hike.

Since that spending is not backed by revenues, it basically, again, is printing money and reducing the value of money already in circulation – the very definition of inflation, an insidious “tax” that, per the U.S. House Budget Committee, is now generating a $17,080 per year price increase for government for the average household.

So let’s do put Kamala’s price controls in place – only on Washington.

Ground already covered in The Donald’s recent X.com tête-à-tête with Elon Musk, during which the über-entrepreneur offered to head up an initiative on “government efficiency.” Amusingly followed up with an X post fancying himself as secretary of a Department of Government Efficiency – or DOGE (wink, wink). 

But “efficiency” isn’t the right word. More like “redundancy.” As in the Oxford English definition: “The state of being not or no longer needed or useful.” Which describes the, say, 80% of government that could be eliminated overnight without most citizens even taking notice.

Hmmm. Exactly the percentage of the then-Twitter staff Musk whacked upon taking charge. And not so far off from the 75% of the federal “workforce” former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy proposed eliminating.

But mayhap even that number is too low. A report by the Public Buildings Reform Board earlier this year found federal government building occupancy averages a stunning 12% of capacity. 

Meaning a lot of “workers” now either side-hustling or fulfilling from home the classic riddle puzzling why a federal bureaucrat never stares out the window in the morning. (Punchline: he or she would have nothing to do in the afternoon.)

I’ll save DOGE leadership a lot of time: Go ahead and fire every federal employee not willing to show up in the office within 24 hours. And dispatch Vivek’s 75% anyway.

Block-grant every discretionary program to the states and eliminate funding over a period of four years. Privatize Medicare and Social Security, patterning them after the federal retiree health care and pension programs and thereby unlocking trillions to be productively invested, along with all the cash now crowded out by other federal spending.

In other words, pursuing a wealth-creation instead of wealth-redistribution society.

On that subject, let’s examine another “good” – but copycat – “Momala” concept: no tax on tips.

Now where did this commentator hear that one before?

What’s so special about NTOT? Just this: It would inevitably generate pressure to eliminate taxes on other forms of income. Trump has hinted he might so extend the concept.

And, unlike Harris, would combine it with huge tariffs.

Both proposals are being panned by economists and the establishment captives at the Wall Street Journal, with tariffs in particular argued to be regressive and inflationary.

But what if the combination of offerings could be the taxation equivalent of Obamacare, which was always intended as the starting gun for a slow walk to single-payer?

Meaning: NTOT plus tariffs becomes the pathway to a consumption taxation system, which is a far less intrusive, expensive, opaque and distorting form than our current insane form of paying for the service we call government.

Even clueless Kamala sort of gets it – she has already called Trump’s tariffs a form of national sales tax.

To which this correspondent answers: “terrific.”

Combine the disincentive from tariffs to locate production abroad with elimination of the income tax and perhaps corporate levies as well (instead of the hike contemplated by Kamalanomics).

Plus the slashing of the federal government to accommodate the difference in revenues being made up by – yes, indeed – a modest, highly transparent sales tax. 

And you will have an investment and jobs-creation boom in America that would make the Reagan Recovery look like a popgun. (With the delicious added benefit of smacking America’s nastiest and most determined global competitor, and certified trade cheater, squarely in the nose.)

Voila! MAWA: as Mr. Trump puts it, Make America Wealthy Again.

That’s a real policy debate that would make this year’s electoral “silly season” both original and very, very good indeed.

Bob Maistros, a regular contributor to Issues & Insights, is a messaging and communications strategist, crisis specialist, and former political speechwriter. He can be reached at bob@rpmexecutive.com.