Oh, I thought your "tax cuts not paying for themselves" is a figure of speech. And that's a literal quote. What is it supposed to mean? Like if you steal less from the people, you get less if that's your only source?
As an old person who actually remembers when George Bush (the dad) coined the term “voodoo economics” during the 1980 primary against Reagan, I’ll explain the central thesis to what backers call “supply side” economics.
It’s basically the same logic as selling merchandise at low cost. How does the government make money? Volume!
Seriously. The argument is that cutting taxes will spur economic growth that will grow the economy so much, that the loss in revenues will be made up by economic growth. i.e Tax cuts pay for themselves.
There is actually ample evidence that this doesn’t actually work, or at least hasn’t worked in 40 years. (Diminishing returns and whatnot.) I’d go so far as to argue that some supporters of this policy even know this because it gave cover for their real goal of simply cutting social programs under the guise of “we can’t afford it”.
We are looking at it from different perspectives. You from the central planner's one. I'm from the position of an acting person, someone who doesn't believe anyone owes them anything, but at the same time preferring to keep what's earned. Someone who's not bought into redistribution programs that spend $4 to redistribute each $1 (actual research for the US), or any involuntary redistribution schemes for that matter.
> The argument is that cutting taxes will spur economic growth
So what do I care for some abstract growth? If my well-being isn't rising, and it isn't if you take away through taxes, excises, indirect taxes half of what I earn with hard toil, not interested.
> cover for their real goal of simply cutting social programs under the guise of “we can’t afford it”
Perhaps your personal welfare is strongly linked to and dependent on that of others. For example, you need roads, security, education, health care, food, electricity, communication, law, customers, vendors, employees, business partners, etc etc.
It is too bad, but it's your government. What are you doing about it? It's like the cliched response to complaints re OSS, but at least that's arguably not your and my responsibility; our government is. It's our job to care for it, make it work, and pass it to our kids in better shape than we got it.
I find the government functions very well given it's necessarily a large institution (which all are bureaucratic and inefficient, including businesses) and perpetual (it can't go out of business and be replaced, but we do replace management!). Transportation infrastructure (roads, airports, etc.), food safety, education, science (NASA, NSF, NIH), courts, military, regulation of banks, national parks, etc. etc. Think of NASA - the greatest explorers in the history of humanity, with nobody even close - is a government agency.
Government's biggest problem is the lack of participation from citizens and obstruction from the GOP. The post office delivered my mail fine for my entire life until the neo-reactionaries got hold of it and (intentionally, I think) ruined it.
"Too bad, but it's your monarch. He's anointed by God. You must care about him".
Not really a very strong argument.
> Think of NASA - the greatest explorers in the history of humanity, with nobody even close - is a government agency.
USSR had dozens of space projects, all by a government ministry. Doesn't mean you'd want to cherish the regime and all its inefficiencies & injustices.
And the Chinese government was building huge ghost cities where no-one lives at the greatest pace in human history, with nobody even close. Yet that isn't considered a positive achievement.
The thing is governments are taking resources out of economy. People don't devour money, they'd spend them or invest anyway (using their own scale of preferences). They could go to a cafe, sponsoring this industry, to a journey, buy a new car, start a new business. But after the central authority takes that much away, there will be that much less for the industries of people's preference. That means new people wouldn't be hired, new car models created and produced, new enterprises started; no new building would appear that otherwise could. And the central authority will at best build something useful at twice the price; because private citizens are motivated to be efficient, the state bureaucrats don't. And at worst, the funds will be squandered, directed to their oligarchic pals, stolen.
> "Too bad, but it's your monarch. He's anointed by God. You must care about him".
It's not a monarch. I assume you live in a democracy. The reason you think people are anointed is that you don't participate. I promise: Participate, especially in local politics, and you'll see how much government depends on citizen participation, and how powerless most people make themselves by bizarrely excluding themselves.
You are putting a lot of words in my mouth and speaking with a lot of assumed authority for someone that just admitted that they don’t understand and most influential public policy in a more than a generation. It is the central economic dogma of a major political party. I find this doubly ironic because you go on to spout positions congruent with that party.
Get off Parler, or whatever and read a history book, because Reagan’s economic policies echo even today. Even without a labeled time axis, there are countless economic charts where you can easily pick out 1981.
You have a long history of posting flamewar comments to this site and of seriously breaking the site guidelines. We've asked you repeatedly to stop, and you're still doing it. If you keep doing it, we will ban you. No more of this, please.
If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, use the site as intended from now on, and drop the ideological warfare please. (No, we don't care which ideology you like or dislike. Either way, it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
We've asked you before to stop posting flamewar comments and using HN for ideological battle. If you keep doing it, we will ban you. No more of this, please.
Actually you're way, way over the bannable line already but I don't want to ban you and not the other person when as far as this thread goes you were behaving equally badly. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, use the site as intended from now on, and drop the ideological warfare please. (No, we don't care which ideology you like or dislike. Either way, it destroys what this site is supposed to be for.
"Tax cuts pay for themselves" has been the conservative justification for how cutting taxes on the wealthy is fiscally conservative and actually benefits everyone, for ~4 decades.
I'm not an American so have no this Democrats vs. Republicans dichotomy, cheering or deriding the very same decisions depending on whether they're coming from "our" or "their" people (as in "He's a Son of a Bitch, but he's OUR Son of A Bitch").
I can afford to be more consistent. What attracted my attention to your post specifically (knock at conservative values aside) is the mentioning of tax cuts as if that's something terribly wrong. It's not.
The paper you've linked that allegedly is supposed to impress Americans, wouldn't anyone else. Authors' assumption for some reason (was it what Republicans promoted?) is that government doesn't have to be more thrifty and less wasteful. It reads: look, the government was just an inefficient juggernaut as usual, and the tax cuts put this behavior under risk.
Insatiable appetites of governments aside, tax cuts do pay off. And not only economically, but also in terms of bringing greater justice and better satisfaction of all but communists.
