A Simple Choice

Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Economics & the Economy, Taxes

Sometimes economic battles are fought by theorists without any strong empirical evidence existing on either side. Today’s battle, with Obama administration tax-and-spend Keynesians on one side, and supply-side economists on the other, is not such a case. As Richard Rahn shows in his Washington Times column, the evidence is really quite clear. Reagan’s supply-side cuts produced a strong recovery by the same point in time where Obama’s Keynesian “stimulating” has not.

Our choice now is simple. We can follow an economic model which has no empirical evidence suggesting it will work by allowing the taxes on capital gains, dividends and death to rise as planned at the end of the year. Or, we can keep those rates low – better yet still, we can reduce them – and get the results for which supply-side economics has already proven capable.