Free Republic

Kleinbard’s second argument against dynamic scoring is based on his assumption that bigger government is good for the economy since the government spends money wisely.I’m not joking. Federal deficits are on an unsustainable path (as it happens, because of undertaxation, not excessive spending). Simply cutting taxes against the headwind of structural deficits leads to lower growth, as government borrowing soaks up an ever-increasing share of savings. …these models are political statements. They show the biggest economic effects by assuming that tax cuts are financed by unspecified future spending cuts. The smaller size of government, not the tax cuts by themselves,...

IÂ’m a big advocate of the Laffer Curve. Simply stated, itÂ’s absurdly inaccurate to think that taxpayers and the economy are insensitive to changes in tax policy.Yet bureaucracies such as the Joint Committee on Taxation basically assume that the economy will be unaffected and that tax revenues will jump dramatically if tax rates are boosted by, say, 100 percent.In the real world, however, big changes in tax policy can and will lead to changes in taxable income. In other words, incentives matter. If the government punishes you more for earning more income, you will figure out ways to reduce the...

Those familiar with the history of twentieth 20th-century economic thought know of the dominance of "Keynesian economics" following the Second World War. While John Maynard Keynes typically receives credit for transforming economics, much postwar Keynesian economics was actually developed by his interpreters and followers. Perhaps the single most important one of these followers was the Romanian born economist Abba P Lerner. Keynes's book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money popularized the notion that market economies were prone to persistent unemployment. Keynes often receives credit for promoting government deficit spending as a means of combating unemployment. However, Abba Lerner...