Of the many worthwhile economic reforms put on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ to-do list after last week’s roundtable, I suspect the one that could – repeat could – produce the most lasting boost to our productivity is the one that didn’t sound like much: reform of the way we regulate the economy. Abolish more nuisance tariffs, anyone?

Economists are obsessed by taxes. So too are business people. So it wasn’t hard for those sitting round the oval table to convince themselves that reforming our system of taxes was the key to improving our “productivity” – the efficiency with which our capitalist economic machine converts inputs of resources into outputs of myriad goods and services.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses a press conference after the economic summit.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

But I doubt it. Our tax system does need major reform, but that’s much more about reducing its generational unfairness than increasing economic efficiency. Economists see taxes as just another price, and the “neoclassical” model of the economy they carry in their heads tells them prices are the key to understanding everything. That’s why they believe such absurd propositions as that every worker on the top tax rate – including all the worthies at the roundtable – is only doing it for the money, and is unmotivated by, for instance, the desire for power and status.

No, a more productive way to think of it is that, though many, many aspects of our lives need to be regulated – from outlawing theft and murder, to what and where we’re allowed to build things – there’s a real risk that the politicians and regulators will overdo it.

That, with the best of intentions, they’ll end up misusing their power. That they’ll make their regulation of........

© The Sydney Morning Herald