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Paul Waldman debunks the “tax cuts for the wealthy grow the economy” myth on The American Prospect.

You have to admire one thing about the Republican perspective on this issue: their unflagging insistence, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, that the best and perhaps only way to affect the economy is by adjusting the tax rate paid by wealthy people. Here’s a quick history review of the last two decades: In 1993, Bill Clinton signed a budget that included tax increases. Republicans unanimously said it would bring a “job-killing recession.” It didn’t; in fact, almost 23 million jobs were created during Clinton’s two terms. Then George W. Bush got elected and signed two rounds of enormous tax cuts. Republicans promised these cuts would super-charge the economy. They didn’t; job growth was weak throughout Bush’s term. Then at the end of 2012, the deal ending the “fiscal cliff” allowed the top income tax rate to revert back to what it had been during the Clinton years. Republicans grumbled that this increase would hamper job growth. That didn’t happen either; in the two years since, the economy has created 5 million jobs.

 

In other words, the Republicans’ essential theory about upper income taxes—increasing them destroys jobs and smothers growth, while cutting them explodes growth and creates huge numbers of jobs—is not just wrong, but demonstrably, obviously, spectacularly wrong. Yet they keep saying it.

 

The reason isn’t all that difficult to concern. For conservatives, cutting upper-income taxes isn’t a practical imperative, it’s a moral imperative. It’s just the right thing to do. Taxes are an inherent moral evil, and taxes on those who have proved their industriousness and virtue by being rich are the most profound moral evil of all. This is a very different argument from the practical one, which says that if we cut taxes for the wealthy then good things will happen to everyone as a consequence.

 

Republicans know that the moral argument has appeal to only a very small number of Americans, mainly those would benefit directly from upper-income tax cuts. So the practical argument is the one they must offer, even if it happens to be utterly false.

Cross-posted from The Sensible Center

http://thesensiblecentercom.blogspot.com/2015/03/gop-tax-cut-fantasyland.html