The Detroit News

Gary Johnson may not know what Aleppo is — though after his embarrassing campaign gaffe we’re sure he’s figured it out — but he knows where the problem is in the American economy: The free market isn’t free.

The Libertarian candidate for president outlined his economic principles during an appearance at the Detroit Economic Club and at an editorial board meeting with The Detroit News on Wednesday. There were no dramatic new ideas for stimulating growth, no bold new plans for job creation. But his approach is bold and dramatic in its common sense simplicity. Johnson would get out of the way and let the markets work.

“I didn’t create a single job as governor of New Mexico,” Johnson says. “I created certainty.”

He did that, he says, by vetoing 750 bills, many of which would have added new rules and regulations. Certainty is the ingredient missing from the current economy. Federal agencies are choking off growth with rulemaking that limits the ability of businesses to make market-based decisions and involves the government too deeply in employer/employee relations.

Johnson says he will end all that and, so far, it is the most refreshing economic message from a presidential candidate.

The former Republican would eliminate most corporate taxes, understanding the basic truth that levies on businesses either get passed on to customers or are taken out of job-creating investments. He says he would sign any tax cut that crosses his desk that is not crony capitalism. In other words, he doesn’t want government using the tax code to pick winners and losers.

His is a simple, free market agenda that reflects his party’s belief that government should play a minimal role in American life.

More important that cutting taxes, Johnson says, is cutting spending. He contends he can cut government outlays by 20 percent to balance the budget and start chipping away at the national debt. He eschews sacred cows, saying Medicare, Medicaid and the military, three of the biggest consumers of tax dollars, can and must be cut substantially. And he’s right.

But when pressed, Johnson could not provide further details about where he’d cut the budget and whether there would be unintended consequences from such a deep and sudden cut in the federal budget. He needs to do so to be considered credible.

Johnson is the only presidential candidate who says he would sign the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade pact. He correctly argues that trade deals drive economic growth and create jobs, and he ascribes to a wide open trading environment regulated by the marketplace.

His free market philosophy also extends to health care. Johnson says the health care system should be reformed to focus on costs and competition, rather than access.

Under Johnson’s vision, health care would become part of the cost of living. Consumers would pay for their ongoing medical needs, and have insurance to cover catastrophic events. He believes, however, that costs for care could be cut to 20 percent of what they are today by allowing more competition into the system through such measures as advertising outcomes and prices.

He also believes the marketplace can regulate energy and the environment. Coal, he notes, is dwindling as a source of energy because natural gas is cheap and plentiful, and that is having a positive impact on carbon emissions. “The free market is working; you don’t need a lot of regulations,” he says.

Libertarians are frequently cast as quacks who want everyone to stay off their lawns.

But returning to truly free markets, reducing the impact of government, and trusting both businesses and consumers to behave rationally doesn’t sound so crazy. It sounds like common sense.