In my latest reading of To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular Socialist Machine,
Newt Gingrich argues that tax cuts stimulate the economy, encourage
economic mobility, and increase revenue. Newt looks at the Kennedy,
Reagan, and Bush II tax cuts, and he also talks about how an increase in
revenue from the capital gains tax corresponded with the capital gains
tax cut, and how a decrease in the corporate tax rate has helped Europe
economically.
Here are some of my reactions to this and other points in my latest reading of this book.
1. I wrote in my post
on Reagan's centennial that it's hard to know which narrative on the
80's is right, since both the Left and the Right present statistics to
support their positions. I'd say that the same is true regarding the
Kennedy tax cuts: Whereas Newt argues that the Kennedy tax cuts increased revenue, economist Bruce Bartlett contends in his book Impostor
that they did not exactly do that. Granted, Bartlett says that the
Kennedy tax cuts generated economic growth that made up for a lot of the
lost revenue that they initially caused, but he does not think that
they actually increased revenue----in terms of the government getting
more money than it was getting before the Kennedy tax cuts. (That's my
recollection of Bartlett's argument, according to my understanding.)
So
who's right? You'd think that different sides would agree at least on
what the data are. Maybe it would be a good project sometime to compare
the statistics that different sides present on a particular
issue----such as "Did income increase during the 1980's, or did wages
stagnate?"----and look at where the statistics are coming from.
2. How easy is it to identify cause and effect in the economy?
Newt says that corporate tax cuts are helping the European economy, but
(elsewhere) he argues that socialism inhibits Europe's economy. Newt
says that Bush II's tax cuts (which he deems good, yet inadequate)
helped the economy, yet he also contends that regulations during Bush
II's administration hindered the creation of jobs and led to the
collapse of the housing bubble. So there are economies that are
good and bad, I guess. How can one attribute what's good in the
economy to tax cuts, and what's bad in the economy to government
intervention? Maybe the opposite is true! Is there a way to tell?
3. I have a hard time wrapping my head around certain economic rules. For
example, if you want to decrease inflation, then the standard wisdom is
that the Federal Reserve can do so by increasing interest rates.
Why? I think it's because less money is in circulation when interest
rates are high, since people are reluctant to borrow money from the
bank. So inflation goes down when there is less money in circulation.
If that's the case, though, wouldn't tax cuts be inflationary, too,
since that puts more money into the private sector? Well,
maybe not, if the rich just sit on their money! But I thought the whole
idea behind tax cuts was that the rich would not just sit on their
money but would invest it, spend it, use it for job creation, etc.
Newt says that increasing government spending is inflationary. I'm not entirely sure why this is so, but I have heard this claim from conservatives. Why, then, was inflation low under Reagan, who increased government spending on defense?
As
I said, the conventional wisdom is that you reduce inflation by
increasing interest rates. But, as Newt notes, the Carter years were a
time when both interest rates and also inflation were high!
Newt says that Reagan bringing down inflation set the stage for interest
rates to come down later, though, so perhaps low interest rates and low
inflation can coincide somehow.