Rebutted by Paul Krugman: Reagan and Revenues:
The wholesale voodization of the GOP is a sight to behold; apparently the nonsense about the Reagan tax cuts having led to a vast rise in revenue is now something one must claim to believe. Anyway, a quick note about Federal revenue history. The way I like to look at it is to compare business cycle peaks. We know that recessions reduce revenue and recoveries raise it. So it’s much more informative to look at peaks (not troughs: all happy economies are more or less alike, each unhappy economy is unhappy in its own way). Oh, and since 1979-82 was really one double-dip recession, I just use 1979 and ignore the 80-81 “recovery”. So here’s the rate of growth of real per capita federal revenues between successive business cycle peaks. There was no Reagan revenue miracle; growth slowed. There was a Clinton miracle. And there was a Bush II reverse miracle.
Rebuttals to talking-points misinformation that I want to have at the forefront of my brain--for when I am surprised, as I will be, by an unexpected question from an unexpected direction while talking to reporters, phone callers, passers-by, radio interviewers, cable TV interviewers, etc....
