Semi-Daily Journal Archive

The Blogspot archive of the weblog of J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics and Chair of the PEIS major at U.C. Berkeley, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

PGL at Angry Bear pounds his head against the wall at the stupidity of National Review:

Angry Bear: John Tamny remains confused....

Despite clear evidence that the marginal rate cuts of the 1920s, 1960s, and 1980s (not to mention the 2003 tax cuts) led to higher revenues, Sen. George Voinovich (R., Ohio) recently said that "contrary to what some of my colleagues believe, tax cuts do not pay for themselves."... Lloyd Bentsen... in 1980... argued for marginal tax-rate cuts for their ability to improve "the productivity performance of the economy over the long term." Republicans should intuitively take to Bentsen's past reasoning...

PGL is right. It is breathtaking:

  1. There is no evidence that the marginal rate cuts of the 1920s, 1960s, 1980s, and 2003 "led to higher revenues." Revenue would have been higher had thos tax cuts not been passed. Larry Lindsey's Growth Experiment pegs the supply-side revenue replacement at 1/3 of the lost revenue--and I think Larry's study is too optimistic.
  2. It is pathetic for Tamny and the National Review crowd to be taking Lloyd Bentsen's name in vain. Bentsen's position was constant: (a) Broaden the base. (b) Lower the rates. And (c) balance the budget. To pretend that Bentsen would have been behind a program of (a) narrow the base, (b) lower the rates, and (c) unbalance the budget--are Tamny and company that stupid, or do they just think their subscribers are that stupid?

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