"CJ, if the Laffer Curve is wrong, then Obama should just tax our way to prosperity, just like Clinton supposedly did."
Is this an attempt to pack in as many intellectual dishonest arguments into a single sentence as possible?
I never said it was wrong, just meaningless. Sure, you can concoct a curve, the end points are not in dispute and it seems reasonable that there is some sort of curve in between. But unless you can actually put numbers to it, it is pretty useless. And the only way to put numbers to it is to analyze past data. Once you change the tax rates or the economy changes, the curve changes and there is no way to determine the curve until after the fact. So it has no predictive value at all. Which Laffer himself says. As a result, using it as a basis of tax policy is, well, crazy.
Two, no one claimed that Clinton taxed our way to prosperity. That is just another of your patented straw men. What did happen was that increasing taxes did not kill economic activity. The best that can be argued is that it might have been better with lower taxes. And it probably would have been, deficit spending always stimulates the economy. Of course, dealing with the resulting debt is a different issue... |
