While We're On the Subject of Evisceration…

Let’s talk about death and taxes.  The Tax Fairy myth’s just been killed (again)- by conservatives:

Bruce Bartlett, who was an adviser to Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official in the first Bush administration, points out that even the Bush administration never claimed such a ridiculous thing. He quotes no fewer than six Bush economic advisers saying that the tax cuts could not possibly have paid for themselves in increased revenue. And then he cites other conservative sources on the question:

In a 2006 article published in the Journal of Public Economics, economist Greg Mankiw, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers during Bush’s first term, estimated the long-run revenue feedback from a cut in capital taxes at 32.4 percent and 14.7 percent for a cut in labor taxes. A 2006 analysis of extending the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts by the Republican-leaning Heritage Foundation estimated that only 30 percent of the gross revenue loss would be recouped through behavioral effects and macroeconomic stimulus. A 2005 Congressional Budget Office study during the time that Republican Doug Holtz-Eakin was CBO director concluded that a 10 percent cut in federal income tax rates would recoup at most 28 percent of the static revenue loss over 10 years. And this estimate assumes that taxpayers have unlimited foresight and know that taxes will be raised after 10 years to stabilize the debt/GDP ratio. Without foresight and no compensating tax increases or spending cuts, leading to an increase in the debt, feedback would be negative; i.e., causing the revenue loss to be larger than the static revenue loss.

Ye evisceration continues at the above link.  And Ed Brayton finishes up with a very good point:

This reminds me a lot of those prosperity gospel preachers who claim that if you send them money it will be returned to you ten or a hundred times greater. If they really believed that, they’d be sending you money.

Remember that when next someone tells you how much money you can make by sending them money.  That goes triple for Cons babbling about the magic of tax cuts for the rich.

For more pwnage, see Sen. Bernie Sanders on oligarchy and the Cons.*

*How the fuck did I manage to fuck that one up?  At least Cujo’s there to correct matters.

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While We're On the Subject of Evisceration…
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