Reply #55: And people have apparently forgotten

[Alcibiades]

That the whole argument behind supply side economics was that the Laffer Curve meant that lower rates would increase revenues by "stimulating" investment. Of course, the Laffer Curve's functional form was always simply assumed to be a parabola with a 50% tax rate at the apex, with tax revenues increasing at rates lower than that point and decreasing after, as diminishing returns "encourages people to forgo income." The empirical and theoretical work done in this area shows that this is simply not the case, but supply side simply got added into the ideology of conservatism without keeping up on the economic literature on the subject. Then, slowly, it would seem that the supposition that revenues would increase at lower rates was dropped from their mindset, and they simply adopted tax cuts as a cure-all. We've been on the left-had side of the curve for many years, and their model has been falsified by history, but they persist nonetheless, showing that ideology trumps common sense yet again.