Supply-Side Economics

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Here's an interesting, informative piece spelling out the intellectual bankruptcy of supply-side economics:

Modern conservatism is built around the promise of supply-side economics — an economic philosophy that claimed to allow Republicans to cut taxes, maintain popular social programs, robustly fund defense and balance the budget. The problem: Supply-side economics hasn’t actually worked as promised, but the GOP refuses to abandon it.

And that, more than hypocrisy, is the real problem facing Republicans — they have principles; those principles just don’t work.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ed-principles/

They type of factually challenged article that you'd expect from WaPo. Bravo.


The article conveniently forgets that the primary reason the deficit "exploded" was spending. As your favorite paper was at least capable of noticing at the time:

For each of the past several years, President Reagan has sent a new budget to Capitol Hill, and Congress has promptly pronounced it DOA -- dead on arrival.

This year, with the drama over the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced-budget act beginning, the early reaction is different: Most Republicans as well as Democrats have declared the administration's budget DBA -- dead before arrival.

As the article goes on to detail, year after year CONGRESS refused to give up their favorite pet spending programs, even after being elected to Congress with promises to reduce spending. Yet, revenues dramatically increased each year:

FY 1989 - $991 billion
FY 1988 - $909 billion
FY 1987 - $854 billion
FY 1986 - $769 billion
FY 1985 - $734 billion
FY 1984 - $666 billion
FY 1983 - $601 billion
FY 1982 - $618 billion
FY 1981 - $599 billion
FY 1980 - $517 billion

https://www.thebalance.com/current-u...evenue-3305762