"Kansas’ Ruinous Tax Cuts" By THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the NY Times

[applegrove]

Kansas’ Ruinous Tax Cuts

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/14/opinion/kansas-ruinous-tax-cuts.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0

"SNIP......................

None of those reasons were correct. There was only one reason for the state’s plummeting revenues, and that was the spectacularly ill-advised income tax cuts that Mr. Brownback and his fellow Republicans engineered in 2012 and 2013. The cuts, which largely benefited the wealthy, cost the state 8 percent of the revenue it needs for schools and other government services. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, that’s about the same as the effect of a midsize recession. Moody’s cut the state’s debt rating in April for the first time in at least 13 years, citing the cuts and a lack of confidence in the state’s fiscal management.

The 2012 cuts were among the largest ever enacted by a state, reducing the top tax bracket by 25 percent and eliminating all taxes on business profits that are reported on individual income returns. (No other state has ever eliminated all taxes on these pass-through businesses.) The cuts were arrogantly promoted by Mr. Brownback with the same disproven theory that Republicans have employed for decades: There will be no loss of revenue because of all the economic growth!


“Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” he wrote in 2012. “It will pave the way to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs, bring tens of thousands of people to Kansas, and help make our state the best place in America to start and grow a small business.”

But the growth didn’t show up. Kansas, in fact, was one of only five states to lose employment over the last six months, while the rest of the country was improving. It has been below the national average in job gains for the three and half years Mr. Brownback has been in office. Average earnings in the state are down since 2012, and so is net growth in the number of registered businesses.




.....................SNIP"

[JaneyVee]

1. This should be the final fucking nail in the

Rotting coffin known as trickle down economics.

[BillZBubb]

2. Trickle down is like the cockroach, you can never eradicate it.

As long as there are gullible saps who buy into the right wing BS that enriching the wealthy will benefit those saps, trickle down will live on. Dr. Laffer's magical elixir will cure all that ails you!

And there is no shortage of gullible saps.

[mindwalker_i]

6. Unfortunately, it fills a niche in the political ecology

and is unlikely to die off. It lend a, however false, argument to what the Repubs want to do - cut taxes for the wealthy so some of it will come back as campaign contributions. Scratchin' each other's backs.

Sucks to be the little people with no back scratchin'.

[HereSince1628]

16. An interesting turn of phrase...playing that out a bit

Outside of losses to death and return to detritus, where in natural ecosystems is there ever movement of energy or material resources downward?

Seems to me, that this really only happens in -mutualisms- which behave much like agriculture. And although some exist outside of human activity, such deliberate interactions as ants growing fungus, these are somewhat rare in nature.

The meme that tax-cutting (i.e. reducing the costs that support the mutualism) is always good, is obvious not good when it means that the seed for next-year's crop, or the cow for next year's calf is eaten at the top under the guise of making more and healthier farmers who will do more farming.

Selfishness destroys mutualisms, and the relationship turns from sustainable mutual benefit, to rapacious exploitation of the resource base. That in turn, evolves the 'husbander' side of the mutualism into one or another form of consuming competitors...leading to...yes, competitive exclusion among the former 'husbanders'.

Over-consuming a harvest, basically getting all you can get when you can get it, can only work over time when it is the habit of the consumer to move out of a depleted patch of habitat, thus allowing it to recover. In human terms, a habit that is at best essentially slash and burn, with it's boom and bust cycles for human use of a habitat, say maybe boom and bust towns, boom and bust nations.

It may be that the only way mutualisms can long exist within human economies (that have better off consuming tops, and more impoverished laboring bottoms) is when the top is willing to take responsibility to care for the overall system, while ensuring food, water and shelter for the bottom whose productivity it can only harvest within disciplined limits.

In a sense this is what human agricultural ecology does...introduces -disciplined husbandry- NOT accidental trickle down -supplementing inputs of energy, nutrients, seed sources, predator and pest control, etc- into the bottom of the ag ecosystem.

We never read of neo-liberal Thatcherite economists talking about insuring supplemental inputs to the bottom. Rather we read about the value of leaving bottom to it's own miserable search for survival, so that it can have the blessing of learning to survive on its own.

[Snarkoleptic]

3. They should have listened to Greenspan, but conservatives threw him overboard

due to a lack of ideological purity.

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Greenspan expressed his disagreement with the conservative argument that tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by generating revenue and productivity among recipients.

"They do not," said Greenspan.

"I'm very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money and the problem that we have gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money," he said. "And at the end of the day that proves disastrous. My view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/01/alan-greenspan-extending_n_666549.html

[No Vested Interest]

8. Mr. Greenspan forgot to mention wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) with

borrowed money.

[ReRe]

4. Anxious to see how their...

... elections turn out this fall and in 2016. Also, does this editorial signal a new direction at the NYTimes? These are the kinds of things that will contribute to the turning of this country.
Hope springs eternal. GOTV for ever more!

[Skittles]

5. what the fuck did they think would happen?

the idiocy, it BURNS

[Blanks]

18. They believed that Reagan increased revenue by cutting taxes...

That's why he was so great. If Reagan had tripled the debt by cutting taxes - Fox News would tell them about it every day. Wouldn't they?

They believe that whereas Carter ran up the deficit - Reagan created a surplus. They use phrases like "everyone knows that cutting taxes increases revenue" and "tax cuts always create jobs".

Watch, they will point to something else as the cause for Kansas problems (it would have worked except for Obamacare etc), and they won't let go of the 'liberal created' problem as the cause - ever.

[stopbush]

7. 35 years of disastrous Reaganomics...and they still repeat the zombie lies.

It doesn't even sound good on paper.

[No Vested Interest]

9. It's hard to fathom that just about 5-6 years ago

Kansas had a Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius.

[longship]

11. And a long history of previous Democratic governors.

Few recent KS governors have been GOP.

[pbmus]

10. They are all around us ....

""

[HeiressofBickworth]

12. I'm having trouble making ends meet;

I think I'll ask for a cut in pay.

Same idea as tax cuts when expressed on a personal level. I'm certainly no economist, but even I know the folly of this approach.

[Martin Eden]

13. Trickle-Down is a Zombie Lie

No matter how often you kill it, the Rethugs keep telling it over and over and some idiots will believe it.

[WinkyDink]

14. "like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,”----Oh, it was a SHOT, all right.

[Skidmore]

15. Chris Hayes devoted some of his program to this.

And Kansas took note.

http://www.msnbc.com/all/all-agenda-why-kansas-so-broke

http://www.kansas.com/2014/05/15/3458721/chris-hayes-msnbc-show-goes-all.html

[Takket]

17. The sad part is this will be blamed on the poor

The right will claim the need for austerity because of too many socialist programs causing overspending which is causing the debt in the state. It is a vicious cycle that the M$M will play up with the right.

since 2012 the national unemployment rate has dropped from 8.5% to 6.3%

Kansas has dropped from 6.1% to 4.8%

Shouldn't their unemployment rate be dropping faster than the national rate if their huge tax cut spurs the 1% to hire more people?