My Canadian counterpart-as he so often does- has captured in a few sentences, why Dr. Laffer is wrong:
California is precisely why I distrust supply-side economics so much. While tax cuts may increase revenue in the short term that revenue almost never matches increases in spending. As a matter of fact, it never has in my lifetime. Not once. At some point, you have to recognize that an experiment has failed. There’s actually a term to describe someone who does the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
Don’t get me wrong, I love tax cuts. That being said, I like not bankrupting entire nations even more. And since politicians are always going to buy their re-election with my money, massive tax cuts are ultimately self-defeating. One need only look at the debt racked up by people like George W. Bush and Stephen Harper to know what those tax cuts are ultimately going to cost them. If you want to see the ultimate example of the “audacity of hope,” look no further than the Bush tax cuts, which relied on nothing other than hope that revenues would pay for them and the trillions of increased spending besides.
I’ve come to the conclusion that supply-side can never work in a democracy. Politicians will always attempt to buy their re-election with public money. That’s what democratic politics is all about and always has been, and it’s silly to assume that you can adapt a political system to an economic theory, particularly where selfish and ignorant voters always have the final word.
In California, we’re seeing what happens when popular democracy and bad economics collide. Prop 13 essentially crippled the ability of the government to actually govern while thirty years of subsequent ballot initiatives sent spending through the roof. The attitude of Californians for decades is that they could have it all and not actually pay for any of it. We’re now seeing where that philosophy has led, and it looks a lot like Zimbabwe.
In other word’s-the Republican vision of heaven.
At some point the people are going to have to be responsible for their own goddamned democracy. And as long as the United States government perpetuates the idea of its own economic supremacy, it’s going to have to be responsible to the rest of the world.
The most recent economic disaster was a completely made in America phenomenon and the United States has yet to accept responsibility for that. The U.S has demanded that its dollar be used as the currency of choice in the trading of important commodities like oil in the international market. But when Bush went about destroying the dollar and accelerated that destruction under Obama, those commodities become more expensive for all of us.
But its all about the largesse the Californians gave to themselves and its all their liberal government. And all those illegal immigrants.
They helped-but there was a bigger culprit-the voters themselves. Time to send out for some LKY ( Le Kwan Yew-democracy in name only):
As much as conservatives would like to pretend otherwise, this can’t be blamed on the government of California because of its constitutional system. Everything that has led the state to the place that its in today was directly voted on by the people. They put themselves in this position, not the government.
Even worse, the people still haven’t learned their lesson. As late as last month’s special election, with full knowledge of what was about to befall them, Californians still voted for the status quo. They just don’t care.
And that’s where Sarah Palin is either dishonest or wrong. At some point, people should lose their freedoms. If their exercises in self-indulgent idiocy begins costing the residents of the other 49 states their hard earned money, maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to abuse their freedom again. Of course, that will necessarily mean limiting that freedom. Despite Palin’s idiotic assertions to the contrary, it isn’t the government that’s slowly destroying federalism, in the case of California, it’s the people.
Welcome to the brave new world.