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”There is No Reason to Believe that Tax Cuts are an Elixir for Economic Growth”
William Gale, Aaron Krupkin and Kim Rueben in the Milken Institute Review:
There is No Reason to Believe that Tax Cuts are an Elixir for Economic Growth: Many folks, and from time to time, majorities in Congress, apparently believe that the cure for what ails the economy is lower taxes – in particular, lower tax rates for high-income earners. Now this enthusiasm has spread to state governments that are led by conservatives, offering new tests of a proposition that has generated scant evidence of success elsewhere.
Failure of this idea at the federal level does not necessarily imply that tax cuts would fail to increase output and jobs at the state level. For one thing, lower taxes in one state might lure existing businesses (and jobs) from other states, even if they yield no overall increase in employment or output. But it’s also worth noting that the stakes are higher for the states. Washington can finance shortfalls in revenue by selling bonds to the public or by borrowing from the Federal Reserve – in effect, printing money. States are far more constrained by the skepticism of the private credit markets or constitutional prohibitions against deficit finance, or both. Thus, any failure of supply-side economics to work its magic could force punishing cuts in state programs. …
At the core of supply-side economics is Arthur Laffer’s back-of-the napkin curve illustrating the undeniable reality that, at some point, higher tax rates will lead to lower revenues as well as fewer jobs and slower growth. But this does not imply there are many realworld examples of tax rates so high that cutting them would have much impact on jobs or growth. That has been amply demonstrated at the national level, where tax cuts have eroded revenue without discernible effect on economic activity.
The states have no good reasons to believe that tax cuts will bring the desired manna. Yet some continue to erode their tax bases in the name of business growth in an era in which few states can afford to cut critical services (that businesses care about) ranging from education to infrastructure repair. Some ideas live on and on, no matter how much evidence accumulates against them. States that accept them as gospel anyway do so at their peril.
Source: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2016/01/there-is-no-reason-to-believe-that-tax-cuts-are-an-elixir-for-economic-growth.html
