Supply Sadism

I ran across an old article by Krugman, from over 4 years ago, that provides some useful perspective on one thing that is bothering me these days.

As all the Republican presidential candidates get my blood boiling by blinding asserting the myth that tax cuts are the cure for any problem and will pay for themselves, it's not enough to simply refute the lie that is the supply siders mantra - cut tax rates and revenue will go up. Giuliani is the worst offender lately: "I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues. Democrats don't know that. They don't believe it."

BS. Find me an economist that believes that. But why, then, besides the easy political hit of crack for their devoted followers, do politicians continue this line of rhetoric? What is this BS really about?

Krugman explains how the tax-cut for everything crowd really has two fronts, the happy, political one of all-gain, no-pain and the ideological one of "starving the beast" so that a fiscal crisis will eventually result in voters hating the goverment, and then force huge spending cuts. Small government is the goal. The dishonest way they have of getting there is what pisses me off.

Krugman:

"A look at who the supply-siders are and how they came to prominence tells the story.

The supply-side movement likes to present itself as a school of economic thought like Keynesianism or monetarism -- that is, as a set of scholarly ideas that made their way, as such ideas do, into political discussion. But the reality is quite different. Supply-side economics was a political doctrine from Day 1; it emerged in the pages of political magazines, not professional economics journals.

That is not to deny that many professional economists favor tax cuts. But they almost always turn out to be starve-the-beasters, not supply-siders. And they often secretly -- or sometimes not so secretly -- hold supply-siders in contempt. N. Gregory Mankiw, now chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, is definitely a friend to tax cuts; but in the first edition of his economic-principles textbook, he described Ronald Reagan's supply-side advisers as ''charlatans and cranks.''"

Why can't more folks see through the BS? If you want a smaller government, then campaign based on telling us what you will cut. Otherwise, quit promising a free lunch, when all you are doing is running up the tab.