Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Kansas' Tax Cut Experiment Was A Predictable Failure - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Kansas' Tax Cut Experiment Was A Predictable Failure - Hit & Run : Reason.com
"People like lower taxes, just not lower spending. Kansas is a lesson that you can’t have the former without the latter.
...Headlines like "How the grand conservative experiment failed in Kansas" and "Trickle-down economics is a nightmare. Kansas proved it" have been dominating the news out of Kansas this month.
On June 6, the Kansas legislature voted to roll back years of tax cuts championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.
Image result for supply side economics examplesMany in the media could not resist gloating about a supply-side policy failure in the home state of the Koch brothers.
Comparisons between Brownback's policies and Trump's tax plan quickly followed suit, with warnings about how the whole nation could soon suffer from a supply-side induced fiscal crisis.
The state certainly finds itself in a fiscal crisis, but chalking up its woes solely to the governor's tax-cutting is a gross oversimplification.
As with many economic policy issues, the reality is a lot more complex than the headlines let on.
...What went wrong? 
First, the legislature failed to eliminate politically popular exemptions and deductions, making the initial revenue drop more severe than the governor planned.
The legislature and the governor could have reduced government spending to offset the decrease in revenue, but they also failed on that front. 
Government spending per capita remained relatively stable in the years following the recession to the present, despite the constant fiscal crises.
In fact, state expenditure reports from the National Association of State Budget Officers show that total state expenditures in Kansas increased every year except 2013, where expenditures decreased a modest 3 percent from 2012.
It should then not come as a surprise that the state faced large budget gaps year after year..."
Longish and worthy read.
Read it all!

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