{"id":529767,"date":"2010-04-16T11:28:28","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T15:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/james-pethokoukis\/?p=3703"},"modified":"2010-04-16T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T15:28:28","slug":"5-reasons-why-the-tea-partiers-are-right-on-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/529767","title":{"rendered":"5 reasons why the Tea Partiers are right on taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the new Washington Consensus: American taxes must be raised dramatically to deal with exploding federal debt since spending can’t\/shouldn’t be cut. Only the rubes and radicals of the Tea Party and their Contract from America<\/a> movement think otherwise. And don’t worry, the economy will be just fine.<\/p>\n

Don’t believe it. While you will never hear this in the MSM, there is plenty of academic research supporting the idea that cutting taxes and spending is the ideal economic recipe for growth, jobs incomes and fiscal soundness. (This all assumes that America’s amazing turnaround since 1980 isn’t proof enough<\/a>.) \u00a0Just take a look:<\/p>\n

1) Tax cuts boost economic growth more than increased government spending. Cutting spending is a better way to reduce budget deficits than raising taxes.<\/strong> “Large Changes in Fiscal Policy: Taxes Versus Spending”<\/a> — Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, October 2009:<\/p>\n

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We examine the evidence on episodes of large stances in fiscal policy, both in cases of fiscal stimuli and in that of fiscal adjustments in OECD countries from 1970 to 2007. Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based upon spending increases. As for fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

2) Tax cuts boost growth. Tax increases hurt growth, especially if used to finance increased government spending.<\/strong> “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks”<\/a> — Christina Romer and David H. Romer, July 2007:<\/p>\n

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In short, tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output. Since most of our exogenous tax changes are in fact reductions, the more intuitive way to express this result is that tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects. … The resulting estimates indicate that tax increases are highly\u00a0contractionary. The effects are strongly significant, highly robust, and much larger than those obtained using broader measures of tax changes. The large effect stems in considerable part from a powerful negative effect of tax increases on investment. We also find that legislated tax increases designed to reduce a persistent budget deficit appear to have much smaller output costs than other tax increases.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

3) Cutting corporate taxes boosts growth.<\/strong> “The Effect of Corporate Taxes on Investment and Entrepreneurship<\/a>” — Simeon Djankov, Tim Ganser, Caralee McLiesh, Rita Ramalho, Andrei Shleifer, January 2008:<\/p>\n

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We present new data on effective corporate income tax rates in 85 countries in 2004. The data come from a survey, conducted jointly with PricewaterhouseCoopers, of all taxes imposed on “the same” standardized mid-size domestic firm. In a cross-section of countries, our estimates of the effective corporate tax rate have a large adverse impact on aggregate investment, FDI, and entrepreneurial activity. For example, a 10 percent increase in the effective corporate tax rate reduces aggregate investment to GDP ratio by 2 percentage points. Corporate tax rates are also negatively correlated with growth, and positively correlated with the size of the informal economy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

4) Tax rates are reaching dangerous levels where higher rates bring in less money<\/strong>. “The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates”<\/a> — Emmanuel Saez, Joel Slemrod and Seth Giertz, May 2009:<\/p>\n

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Following the supply-side debates of the early 1980s, much attention has been focused\u00a0on the revenue-maximizing tax rate. A top tax rate above [X] is inefficient because decreasing the tax rate would both increase the utility of the affected taxpayers with income above [Y] and increase government revenue, which can in principle be used to benefit other taxpayers. Using our previous example … the revenue maximizing tax rate would be 55.6%, not\u00a0much higher than the combined maximum federal, state, Medicare, and typical sales tax rate\u00a0in the United States of 2008.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

5) Cutting corporate taxes boosts wages.<\/strong> “Taxes and Wages”<\/a> — Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur, June 2006:<\/p>\n

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Corporate taxes are significantly related to wage rates across countries. Our\u00a0coefficient estimates are large, ranging from 0.83 to almost 1-thus a 1 percent increase in\u00a0corporate tax rates leads to an almost equivalent decrease in wage rates (in percentage\u00a0terms). … Higher corporate taxes lead to lower wages. A 1 percent increase in corporate\u00a0tax rates is associated with nearly a 1 percent drop in wage rates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are plenty more, of course. The Tax Foundation lists a dozen recent studies <\/a>how harmful business taxes are to growth, jobs and wages. Economist Greg Mankiw <\/a>has determined America is far from a low tax nation. More like in the middle. And let me add this from economist Scott Sumner<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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When I started studying economics the US was much richer than Western Europe and Japan, but was also growing more slowly than other developed countries. They were still in the catch-up growth phase from the ravages of WWII. But since Reagan took office the US has been growing faster than most other big developed economies, and at least as fast in per capita terms. They\u2019ve plateaued at about 25% below US levels, when you adjust for PPP. This is the steady state. \u00a0…\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Why is per capita GDP in Western Europe so much lower than in the US? Mankiw seems to imply that high tax rates may be one of the reasons. … So I think Mankiw is saying that if we adopt the European model, there really isn\u2019t a lot of evidence that we\u2019d end up with any more revenue than we have right now. …\u00a0Of course the progressives\u2019 great hope is that we\u2019ll end up like France. But Brazil also has high tax rates, how do they know we won\u2019t end up like Brazil?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is the new Washington Consensus: American taxes must be raised dramatically to deal with exploding federal debt since spending can’t\/shouldn’t be cut. Only the rubes and radicals of the Tea Party and their Contract from America movement think otherwise. And don’t worry, the economy will be just fine. Don’t believe it. While you will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1063,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1063"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}