The recent downturn gave statists and Keynesians the opportunity to wag their fingers and natter " I told you so".
The death of Jack Kemp has heightened the liberal hypocrisy and factual delinquency culminating in Bob Herbert's column in today's New York Times. In his usual ideologically heavy handed way, Herbert tries to compliment Kemp for tying to have a "Big Tent" within the Republican Party. However, he claims that Kemp was wasting his time by trying to be inclusive with a "racist" institution. As evidence he cites a FIFTY (50) year old quote from Bill Buckley which he long ago repudiated re: Southern reaction to Brown vs. Bd. of Education.
Herbert then says that Kemp's supply side economics was A. a failure and B. responsible for our current economic situation. Both are blatantly untrue.
JFK's tax cuts gave us unprecedented economic growth; full employment with low inflation. So did Reagan's and so did Clinton's and so did Bush's.
Herbert repeats the claim that the "rich got richer and the poor got poorer". The first part is correct and the second is not with one big "but". JFK's tax cuts increased employment and income at all levels. With Reagan's and Clinton's incomes went up for all groups except arguably the BOTTOM fifth of EARNERS and under Bush their wages were stagnant and some studies even show a decline.
But it wasn't tax cuts for higher earners that caused the stagnation. Almost all of those people NEVER paid Federal Income Taxes in the first place ! PAYROLL taxes; YES ! And thanks to Reagan, O'Neil, Greenspan and Claude Pepper in the 1980's, PAYROLL taxes went UP ! Thanks to Clinton in the 90's, Payroll taxes went up . Thanks to Bush, Medicare fees went UP! The income stagnation had zero, zip, nada to do with cuts in marginal INCOME Tax rates.
Just as importantly; maybe even MORE importantly depending on who you read and listen to; wages for the bottom fifth have been suppressed and forced down by ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Low wage, unskilled jobs have been filled by Illegals.
Under Clinton and Bush, the middle three tiers have experienced ever growing STATE and LOCAL tax increases and that's why they have NOT seen increased incomes. Again, it has NOTHING to do with cuts in marginal Federal Income and Capital Gains tax rates.



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