It was in 1916 — 100 years ago this year — that America made a big, big mistake that has done significant damage to our economy and the fairness of our tax system for an entire century. We are talking about the estate tax, more popularly known as the death tax.

The tax reform plan released on Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady and with the blessing of Speaker Paul Ryan, is a thing of economic beauty. It cuts tax rates across the board, eliminates the death tax and the alternative minimum tax, makes the U.S. Corporate tax system competitive and does all this without raising the deficit. Well done.

During last week's Republican debate in Charleston, Senator Marco Rubio attacked Senator Ted Cruz for being in favor of "a VAT tax." Cruz responded that his flat tax plan of 16 percent has the full endorsement of "Reagan economist Arthur Laffer." He was referring to a joint statement by the two of us entitled: "The Cruz/Paul Flat Tax is the Best Tax." (Senators Cruz and Paul have endorsed similar tax reforms.)

With the first real votes being cast in the presidential race on Monday, this is an opportune moment to do some last-minute comparison shopping on the candidate tax reform plans. On this issue there’s a lot to cheer about. All the Republican candidates have crafted plans that would slash tax rates for everyone and most would vastly simplify the thousands of pages of IRS tax code too.

Everyone’s blaming the oil price collapse and China’s sliding economy, for the rout of the stock market these first two weeks of 2016. That’s part of the story, but there may also be a policy explanation for the bearish sell-off.