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by textor 3074 days ago
This isn't about the number of examples. It's plainly disingenious to say that "TD has been referred plenty, not under that name". Basically, in such way one demands the right to reduce supply side theories – or, in popular practice, to reduce every argument in favor of any taxation rate lower than proposed by the opponent – to a strawman of choice, as if the strawman was the original idea that's "covered up" or "dogwhistled" or whatever. Like this, in extreme:

A: We need to impose 100% tax on the top 10%, to achieve economic growth and lower inequality.

B: This isn't even wrong, this is asinine.

A: Oh, trickle-down much?

Why do this? Naturally, because genuinely debubunking the specific arguments against high tax rates is a lot harder than joking about the bourgeoise that promote TD because of their greed.

1 comments

I think it's more that, when people sit down and debunk the arguments against high tax rates, the people who believe in supply side economics don't read them. Which in some cases is because they'd rather watch old cowboy movies. In others, it's because they simply don't care. It's an extreme case - but consider what happened to the last accademic economist who tried to use economic arguments against the external imposition of supply side. He was called Yanis Varofakis. They ignored him, the press called him a nut, then they just went ahead with the austerity package.