Selling the ‘Supply-Side’ Myth

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



Selling the ‘Supply-Side’ Myth
January 27, 2012

Exclusive: Any rational assessment of America’s economic troubles would identify Ronald Reagan’s reckless “supply-side” economics as a chief culprit, but that hasn’t stopped Republican presidential hopefuls, led by Newt Gingrich, from selling this discredited theory to a gullible GOP base, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry


Despite Newt Gingrich’s claim that “supply-side” economic theories have “worked,” the truth is that America’s three-decade experiment with low tax rates on the rich, lax regulation of corporations and “free trade” has been a catastrophic failure, creating massive federal debt, devastating the middle class and off-shoring millions of American jobs.

It has ”worked” almost exclusively for the very rich, yet the former House speaker and the three other Republican presidential hopefuls are urging the country to double-down on this losing gamble, often to the cheers of their audiences — like one Florida woman who said she had lost her job and medical insurance but still applauded the idea of more “free-market” solutions.

Gingrich even boasts of his role in pioneering these theories of massive tax cuts favoring the rich, combined with sharp reductions in the role of government. That approach, once famously mocked by George H.W. Bush as “voodoo economics,” was supposed to spur businesses to expand production (the “supply side”), thus creating jobs and boosting revenues from all the commercial activity.

“I worked with Ronald Reagan to develop supply-side economics in the late ’70s, along with Jack Kemp and Art Laffer and Jude Wanniski and others,” Gingrich declared at a recent town hall event. “We ended up passing it into law in ’81. At the time it was very bold. People called it ‘voodoo economics.’ It had one great virtue: it worked.” ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/27/selling-the-supply-side-myth/