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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (43303)	5/19/2010 2:52:48 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

(Still... the net effect* from the Reagan years was STILL a lowering of tax rates --- even after some of it was taken back in a few years. So it is not like there was 'no net reduction'. :-)* Consistently applied, does not equal, was applied by Reagan. Tax increases continued after Reagan left office. For something like starve the beast to really work the tax cuts would either have to be so extreme as to cause a truly massive and obvious revenue drop, or alternatively large enough to cause a noticeably drop over a long length of time. Under such circumstance "starve the beast" is reasonably likely to work, esp. if your considering "primary" spending (government spending on things other than debt) as your main consideration, but only at the cost of perhaps crippling debt. Also it would only clearly work in the sense of restraining government spending growth going forward from when you get unsustainable massive debt and deficits, not so much in terms of restraining government growth before than point (and that growth can be huge). So its a strategy that is likely to be disappointing at best, and has a decent chance to cause net harm, but in a narrow sense it can work, and to a very limited degree, in that very narrow sense, it probably has worked. If you where not relying on unsustainable deficits and massive debt to force down spending, but had some hard limit as to how large of deficits government could run, than "starve the beast" would work much better, much quicker, and in a much more obvious way, with less downside in term of heavy debt; but it would be less likely to be attempted in the first place.