Category Archives: taxes

The Reagan Tax Cuts and Defense Buildup: Supply-Side Miracle or Keynesian Stimulus?

I keep on hearing about the supply-side miracle associated with the the Reagan era tax cuts. What do changes in estimated potential versus actual output suggest?


Figure 1: Year-on-year growth rate of real GDP (blue), and of potential GDP (red), calculated as 4th differences of logged values. Dashed lines at effective dates for Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and Tax Reform Act of 1986. Source: BEA, CBO.

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Austerity, What’s It Good For?

With apologies to Seinfeld. It seems like a long time ago that conservatives argued for cutting taxes and cutting spending so as to spur expansion — but the Brownback and Walker experiments in Kansas and Wisconsin are in some sense just being completed now, some five years after Governor Brownback’s “shot of adrenaline” forecast.

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No Retraction: TCJA Average Growth Acceleration = 0.01-0.02%

In response to my quote of CRFB’s assertion that average growth acceleration under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act relative to baseline will be only between 0.01-0.02 percent (shown below),


Source: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (Jan. 3, 2018).

Reader Vivian Darkbloom writes:

I’m asking myself how an average increase of only 0.01 percent to 0.02 percent in GDP growth over a decade could result in an average of increase in the level of GDP output of 0.7 percent of that same ten-year period as reported by the CFRB and Menzie.

and continues:

Either you need to justify it (and the related text regarding the assertion that it is 1/20th to 1/40th of the McConnell estimate), or retract it.

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