Political Memes

anyone have a source for this claim?

This was the 1983 tax cut. The longer term implication was people realized Laffer’s suggestion that there is a top rate that is so high it promotes evasion, avoidance and fraud was demonstrated to be likely true. A negative outcome was the GOP claiming further cuts would do the same when there’s no reason to believe it would.

taxes aren’t just about revenue, they’re a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn’t to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.

Presuming this is a serious statement, why do you think this is the case instead of them funding the government which is what taxes have always been about? We didn’t care much about wealth inequality until the last 200-300 years. The ruling class has always cared about taxes.

if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them ‘fixed it’

It didn’t “fix” anything. The higher rates led to lower tax revenues. The cuts provided more.

then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:

1946-1980 as 1940-45 are war years and aren’t as great.

The US made up roughly 40-55% if the total GDP of earth in that time. As WWII destroyed the industrial capacity if most nations the USA and to a lesser extent the Warsaw Pact nations were the only ones manufacturing heavy equipment. By 1980 most of the world has either developed for the first time their own industry or revoltp what they had. This massive gap between the US population and everyone else is why things were so good.

inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim.

There’s no “good/bad” in economics because it’s social science not a religion or moral code. I said it brought in more tax revenue which is accurate.

Inequality has skyrocketed because of anti-union sentiments and the fact that between 1991 and 2003 1/3 of the total labor pool of earth could suddenly be hired by Westetn companies (the fall of the USSR, liberalizations within China and India moving away from socialist economic policies drove this).

those who say so based on a loosely held ‘I’ve done the math’ argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it’s not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I’ll wait.

No one is saying this. Your grasp on this history is flawed. You even have gone so far as to suggest taxes aren’t primarily about funding the government which is frankly “novel”. I wouldn’t be taking any kind of authoritative tone on this subject if I were you.

I have to work but I’ll tackle the second half later.