Will GOP economic policys actually become popular

@ElwoodBlues Blowing a huge hole in government revenue. Who could have predicted that would increase deficits. 🤣

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow St Ronald of Reagan used to flash around this piece of bullcrap called the "Laffer Curve" which suggested that it was theoretically possible for taxes to be high enough to suppress economic activity. Reagan's cuts proved US tax rates were nowhere near that point.

@ElwoodBlues These are great and telling data. I did an analysis a few years back that showed that if you looked at the accumulated annual federal budget deficits since 1968, 87% were accumulated under Republican presidents.

The facts are simple--1) Republican administrations are primarily responsible for our huge budget deficits. 2) The economy improves under Democratic leadership. 3) Carter did a much better job on the deficit than Reagan--Reagan's smallest budget deficit was larger than Carter's largest. 4) Trump is the only post-WWII president to show a net loss of jobs during his presidency. 5) Trump had, by far, the largest budget deficit in history during his failed term in office.

@windinhishair And yet the "common sense" messaging about both parties are completely divorced from reality on economics.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Unfortunately, yes. And the data are readily available to anyone who wants to read them, which is sad. The truth is easily accessible.

@windinhishair Well one thing the GOP does have right is that the Democrats suck at messaging and usually let the GOP hijack the narrative.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow That has been the case for decades.

@windinhishair I think the last Democrat with a knack for it was for all his flaws Bill Clinton with his "It's the economy, stupid."

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Clinton definitely had the gift of gab and knew what people wanted to hear.

@ElwoodBlues Probably caused by COVID.
Not Mr. Trump's biggest fan myself, but still...

@helenS The thing is, he chose how the US handled covid from the start so that is still on him.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow No question about that. In my opinion he would have won the elections if he had handled COVID better than he really did. It was his biggest flaw.

@helenS Trump's biggest flaw, and feature (to his Cult), was the 30,571 documented lies he told in public during his failed term in office. His covid lies helped contribute to the high US death toll and the disasterous economy.

@ElwoodBlues the Laffer Curve did demonstrate an optimal range for federal income taxes that would also maximize tax receipts.

@HoraceGreenley It demontrated such a range should exist; but it failed to show where that range was.

And in fact people always knew such a range existed; the main result of the Laffer Curve was to fool some folks into believing (or at least claiming) that pre- Reagan era tax rates were above that maximizing range. When Clinton raised taxes and balanced the budget in the midst of a booming economy, it should have put the final nail in the Laffer Curve's coffin.

@ElwoodBlues Actually the Laffer Curve did define the range.

@HoraceGreenley Actually the Laffer Curve completely mispredicted the range. That's why tax revenues dropped and deficits rose dramatically following Reagan's tax act of 1981, and why Reagan was forced to raise taxes with his Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, his Social Security Amendments of 1983, and his Deficit Reduction Act of 1984; not to mention his Tax Reform Act of 1986.

See https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-analysis/Documents/WP81-Table2013.pdf

@ElwoodBlues I'll look at this more carefully when I'm on my PC.

However this document states that it represents the opinions of the authors.

I don't think this proves your point.

@ElwoodBlues Laffer is one of those people who always seems to get it wrong.

@HoraceGreenley Well, it says they are revenue estimates from the Congressional Record; not quite the same.

It certainly undermines any fantasies that the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 were ever going to pay for themselves.

I'm recognizing a familiar pattern here:
(1) you make a claim;
(2) I produce data undermining said claim;
(3) you say my data is imperfect.
Step 4 would be where you produce data supporting your claim and countering my data.

@ElwoodBlues Not really. Any tax cuts will reduce tax receipts in the short term. In the long term the increased economic activity will generate more tax receipts.

The economic boom under Reagan didn't really get going until his second term.

The next 15+ years was the largest wealth creation in human history.

@HoraceGreenley The biggest deficit before Reagan was Carter's 1980 $74 billion deficit that actually caused a debt increase of $81 billion.

Check out https://www.thebalance.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306 and watch the debt increase column during 1980-2000.

Reagan never got the deficit under TWICE the Carter maximum deficit, and neither did Bush 1. The deficit didn't shrink until Clinton's 1993 tax increase. And as the numbers above show, Clinton, with his tax increase presided over more job growth, more DJIA growth, and more deficit reduction than anybody else.

I said watch the debt increase column because Reagan (& following presidents) employed some real deficit slight of hand. Under Reagan, the Social Security admin began building a surplus to pay later for baby boomer retirements. Reagan's Treasury began "borrowing" from the SSA and counting those surpluses against the deficit. The amount of "borrowing" is the difference between deficit and debt increase in the data I linked.

You somehow forgot to include the S&L crisis of 1989 and the recession of 1991 in your Reagan plaudits. And yet you try to give Reagan credit for the booming Clinton years, LOL!!! Does that mean Obama gets credit for the 3 good years under Trump??? ROTFL!!!

@ElwoodBlues They do the same thing with Trump. The economic data they present stops dead before the pandemic.

@ElwoodBlues I have not read any of this material.

Don't forget the other half of the equation. Spending.

Spending by the federal government is not static. Reagan spent a lot of money.

@HoraceGreenley Yes he did. He thought he had license to both cut taxes and maintain or increase spending levels because of Laffer Curve "magic." And Reagan wasn't the only one touting tax cut "magic." It's become a persistent pernicious fiction.

Another thing the last 40 or 50 years have taught us is that no Congress ever has the discipline to cut spending. The best we can hope for is limiting the rate of increase. So if deficits matter, we need to resist the seduction of tax cut snake oil.