THE FUTURE OF AMERICA IS ALWAYS THE PAST OF W:

"Conservative" isn't exactly the word I would use, but he chose it, so for now let's just run with that.  Here is an excerpt from Matt's Substack (do subscribe!):

In terms of Tyler's take, while I accept the logic of the view that it's better to tax consumption than to tax investment, I just don't buy into the idea that taxing investment is really bad. If I did, I would be a conservative like he is. But I don't. I also think that, frankly, he always holds Democratic bills to a super-high standard of technocratic rigor while setting a much lower bar for Republican ones -- to be generous, he maybe does that to counteract what he sees as a prevailing left bias of econ Twitter.

But to me, taxing investment with one hand while subsidizing investment with another is pretty good, especially paired with deficit reduction and permitting reforms.

Whether taxing investment at high rates is "bad," or "really bad," I am not sure.  But it is at least one of those. Let me lay out a core, simple case for relatively low rates of taxation on capital income.  One can slug it out with the models, but much of the case comes down to two core intuitions:

1. A lot of people are myopic.  That encourages too much consumption relative to investment.  Matt himself frequently cites examples of myopia, in this Substack post it is Doritos chips and also Instagram.

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