April 2017.

     Once President Ramp Waddler was comfortably installed in his sinecure, he and the congressional GOP revved up the legislative engine to implement its policy for all seasons, the measure that resolves every problem, addresses every issue, redresses every grievance, and virtually ensures the coming of the millennium, except that it has never once delivered on its promise when assessed empirically.  It was time to cut some taxes.  And, if it’s time to cut some taxes, it’s time to release the Laffer.  Yes, voodoo economist – Poppy Bush’s characterization, not mine – Arthur Laffer hit the cable news bricks.  The man is incorrigible.  His imperviousness to contrary data, indeed to reality, amazes.     

Peter Baker synopsized the Laffer saga well.  My letter is largely anti-supply-side boilerplate; however, it does contain a small critique.  Mr. Baker, had he more room to run, might have examined what was happening in states that were inflicting the Laffer orthodoxy on their citizens.  He might also have looked at the states embracing the heretical path and raising taxes.  The GOP loves the “fifty laboratories of the states,” except when it doesn’t, and this is one of those times.

Here’s Peter Baker’s article:

Peter Baker, “A ’70s Economic Theory Comes to Life Once More,” The New York Times, 26 April 2017, A19 (www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/politics/white-house-economic-policy-arthur-laffer.html).

Here’s the unpublished letter:

     The evergreenness of Arthur Laffer’s supply-side theory is a marvel.  Given more space, Peter Baker’s lucid assessment of supply-side economics as federal tax policy might have included a few words concerning its efficacy in the putative laboratories of the states.

     Kansas’s shuttered classrooms, truncated school years, neglected infrastructure, exploding deficits, and flirtation with fiscal insolvency since Governor Sam Brownback – with Mr. Laffer as his guru – sharply reduced taxes in 2012 are well known.  Perhaps more instructive is the counter-example of California’s robust economy since Governor Jerry Brown hiked taxes, also in 2012, an increase borne mainly by the wealthiest, those who routinely benefit most from Lafferian tax schemes.

     And yet, despite no instance in which the theory has fulfilled its promise of fiscal neutrality – a balancing of lost tax revenues by economic growth and a broadened tax base – the idea persists.  Perhaps it is evergreen like a weed.

     Messrs. Trump, Ryan, and McConnell should remember that GOP control of the government grants them full ownership, for good or ill, of a Laffer-style tax giveaway.