Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
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.
Trust a European economist to tout the conventional wisdom; no its not, as you yourself say above. It has happened several times in American history. IIRC Thomas Sowell say it happened in the Coolidge admin, the Kennedy admin, the Reagan admin and I believe that devil Bush's admin.

Just because a rate is ridiculously high doesn't mean it isn't applied. So if you knock down a ridiculously high rate revenue goes up because economic activity goes up. Which you said. So lower taxes don't equal lower revenues period. Viola.

As far as a bunch of Euroweenie students laughing at the US, weelllll....