Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

“Trickle down” is of course a disingenuous misnomer invented by the left to stigmatize conservative supply-side economic policies. It implies favoring the rich—that doing so will “trickle down” to everyone else. Nonsense. Conservatives don’t care any more or less about the rich than do liberals. The point for conservatives is not to help the rich, but to limit the harm done to incentives by tax policy so individuals have greater opportunities to become rich. President Obama misrepresents supply-side economics and then goes on to misinform his audience that it’s never worked. People are entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own facts.    Every time supply-side economic policies have been tried, tax rate reductions were applied to every income group — lower-income, middle-income, and upper-income alike — giving everyone a better shot at success. This is true regarding supply-side policies of the 1920s, 1960s, 1980s and 2000s. Economist Thomas S...

This NYT Graphic keeps coming up repeatedly (it's been so widely reproduced, many don't even realize that the Times is the original source!) It's really emblematic of the mindless leftist FUD about economics. Just for starters, this thing represents the "Bush Tax Cuts" as a "cost" . What they fail to understand is that tax rates and tax revenue are two different things. Since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950's federal tax revenue as a percent of GDP has averaged about 18 percent. It didn't matter whether top tax rates were 92 percent (yes, they were that high!), or as low as 30 percent. Tax "rate" differences are not a "cost" item that you can just stick in some chart and say, "See! Bush cost us more money than Obama!". Tax "Cuts" (or in reality "current tax rates", whatever they may be) are not really a cost at all. What we need to measure is revenue to determine if curr...