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THOSE ADORABLE SUPPLY-SIDERS. To add onto LeMew's points about the shifting, hollow rationales for supply-side economics, we not only have the odd spectacle of government-haters promising it'll bring in more revenues, but a yet-odder explanation that lefties should be the real supply-siders because poor people can't possibly manage their money, and so giving it to the rich is better for them. I'm reminded here of Daniel Davies' classic explanation of how he acquired the necessary foresight and vision to oppose the Iraq War in advance:
Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance....Our lecturer, in summing up [a stock options] debate, made the not unreasonable point that if stock options really were a fantastic tool which unleashed the creative power in every employee, everyone would want to expense as many of them as possible, the better to boast about how innovative, empowered and fantastic they were. Since the tech companies' point of view appeared to be that if they were ever forced to account honestly for their option grants, they would quickly stop making them, this offered decent prima facie evidence that they weren't, really, all that fantastic.If supply side economics really did so much for government revenues, then the people who cared about increasing government revenues would support supply side policies, and those who wanted to shrink the government till it could drown in a tub would oppose them. That it's quite the opposite is telling. If supply side economics were really so great for the poor, than those who primarily care about how government treats the economic underclass would...support the policies. They oppose them. The only interesting thing about the debate, in fact, is that supply siders think the rest of us such knuckleheads that we'll not notice any of this, nor notice that while supply-side policies were being pursued by Reagan and Bush 43, revenues fell, poverty grew, and the classless socialist utopia Jack Kemp promised failed to materialize. This is, thankfully, a straightforward debate, where the data is fairly clear and the coalitions largely as one would expect. A few dodgy, strikingly counterintuitive arguments don't balance out the ledger, I fear. --Ezra Klein