Change We Actually Can Believe In

From economist Tom Cooley:

"After a long, hard fought and history-making campaign, Barack Obama is the president-elect. There is great joy throughout America and the world at the election of this thoughtful man as our first black president. Now that the grinding political process is behind us, he is free to reshape his campaign sound bites into presidential policies that will deliver the real change he promised.

And here, I start to dream…

In a bold departure from campaign rhetoric aimed at comforting disaffected rust-belt voters, Mr. Obama is now able to affirm his commitment to free trade and the process of globalization. Importantly, informed by his University of Chicago and Harvard-based economic advisers, he has underscored his support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, to the great relief of our most important trade partners to the North and the South.

In backing away from his threat to unilaterally back out of NAFTA, Mr. Obama is citing the fact that the overall value of trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico has more than tripled to $930 billion in the years since the Treaty was put into place. Trade with NAFTA partners now accounts for more than 80% of Canadian and Mexican trade, and more than a third of U.S. trade.

More importantly, he notes that all of the evidence suggests that U.S., Mexican, and Canadian gross domestic products have grown as a result of the NAFTA Treaty. Mr. Obama points out that real hourly compensation in the U.S. business sector has risen 19.3% over the period from 1993-2007, suggesting that NAFTA may not have suppressed U.S. wages as alleged by its critics.

To further underscore his commitment to free trade and take a swipe at the special interest politics of the past, Mr. Obama has moved aggressively to remove absurdly costly protections for ethanol production and opened the door to ethanol imports from emerging markets like Brazil. And the American people, relieved to have real leadership at last, are easily convinced that removing huge subsidies to corn growers in the U.S. will help ease the distortions in the worldwide market for basic food stuffs.

Given the profound weakness in the economy, Mr. Obama has backed away from his promises to increase taxes on the returns on human capital (his redistributive tax on the top 2% of earners), and on physical capital (capital gains, dividends and corporate profits). He recognizes that what we need is more investment in all these forms of capital to stimulate the economy, and that private investment is the best way to achieve it.

Indeed, recognizing that the key to the future prosperity of the U.S. economy is--as it has always been--rising productivity driven by innovation, Mr. Obama has announced new immigration policies that will open America's doors to talented workers to meet the needs of American companies--something that Bill Gates and other great innovators have been urging for many years.

This courageous man, an attorney himself, is making a quick, direct attack on health care costs by backing tort reform that will eliminate one of the greatest inefficiencies in the economics of health care. And to address the growing gap between the most highly paid workers in our society and the rest, Mr. Obama has announced major investments in education, from early childhood to universities, to improve the quality and access for all. Education, he argues, is the best way to help those who have been displaced in the process of globalization.

This is change I can believe in!

Every four years we get to dream again. Wouldn't it be nice this time if we didn't have to wake up"