Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
(...)revenue goes up when you lower rates, generally.
Trust an economist: That's nonsense.
It has never been observed since the Laffer curve argument has been brought forward that lowering a tax increases its or even only total revenue. The opposite is being observed every single time.

Lower taxes = less revenue. All else is nonsensical propaganda. Period.


There's a theoretical special case in which theoretically lowering the tax rate might increase revenue - this applies to ridiculously high tax rates, far above 50%.
A reduction of a tax rate from say 50% to 49% or 40% or 30% will inevitably deliver a loss of revenue not much smaller than the reduction of the tax rate (reduction from 50% to 40% would yield almost 20% less revenue).



The Laffer curve myth is one of those anglophone speciality myths - the rest of the world is laughing at you (if it knows or learns about he myth) for it.
My whole microeconomics class of more than 60 students laughed heartily, for sure.
That's because we haven't been indoctrinated with big lie propaganda abut the Laffer curve for three decades, of course.