Republicans have now argued for over 30 years that we need to cut taxes and the rich will have more money to spend on all of us. It is the core of supply-side economics. It has NEVER worked.
From EPI:
Contrary to the predictions of supply-side proponents, the 1981 tax cuts did not lead to better economic performance. Economists generally measure performance from one business cycle peak to the next. The last three peaks occurred in 1979, 1989, and 2000. It is instructive to compare the performance of investment, productivity, and output in the 1979-89 cycle, which was influenced by the 1981 tax cuts, with the 1989-2000 cycle, which was little affected by those cuts.
Click on graph for larger version
Warren Buffett has been saying this for years. He was on This Week and repeated that we needed to raise taxes on the rich.
From HuffPo:
“I think that people at the high end, people like myself, should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it,” he told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour in a clip played on “This Week” on Sunday.
When Amanpour pointed to critics’ claims that the very wealthy need tax cuts to spur business and capitalism, Buffett replied, “The rich are always going to say that, you know, ‘Just give us more money, and we’ll go out and spend more, and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you.’ But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”
