Economic voodoo liberals do so well

By W. James Antle III
web posted September 10, 2001

Blanket liberal opposition to lower tax rates has led to some
surprising economic conclusions. Gone are the days of using
deficit spending as "pump-priming" to jolt a sagging economy
back to life. Now liberals regard budget surpluses as vital and
tax cuts that aren't really welfare payments (i.e., "refundable tax
credits" for those who don't pay taxes) as something to be
avoided at all costs.

Case in point is the latest economic advice of Robert Kuttner,
co-editor of The American Prospect. In an August 28
syndicated column, he suggests repealing President Bush's
recently enacted tax cut to "reclaim the surplus" and then devote
the entire surplus to government spending. At least he is honest
about what the president's critics plan to do with the surplus in
the absence of a tax cut. Now, he may not have noticed that the
economy continues to slow despite the fact the past fiscal year
saw non-defense discretionary spending rise 14.1 per cent and
government spending at all levels has continued to rise up
through the last quarter. Presumably, he has some nifty
"investments" that he would like the federal government to make
in the national economy. Yet the tax cut is already coming into
effect and repealing it at this point would essentially raise taxes
on 75 million people.

Since the economy grew only 0.2 per cent last quarter and the
real private-sector economy actually shrank, the following
question becomes relevant: What economics text recommends
raising taxes during an economic slowdown? It is certainly not
recognizable as Keynesian economics, which was until recently
mainstream liberal economics. Of course, Kuttner would have
the feds inject money into the economy in the form of public
spending (money they first extracted from the economy via
taxes). Other than possibly making income distribution charts
more closely reflect Kuttner's personal value system, what could
we hope to accomplish by doing this? To say nothing of what
this does to incentives and the stability of the after-tax return on
work and investment, the federal government will spend the
money less economically than the private sector.

Sure, a new round of government spending might be able to set
up a national health insurance system and subsidize below-
poverty wages, among other activities. But whatever benefits
Kuttner might argue this would have, economic benefits aren't
among them. Consider the social democracies of Western
Europe. As European Union countries increased their state
spending from 34 per cent of GDP in 1961 to 51 per cent in
1995, their unemployment rates tripled while ours remained
relatively stable. We compare very nicely to our friends across
the pond in terms of annual economic growth rates, per capita
GDP, unemployment, long-term unemployment and net job
growth. If government spending were the best way to stimulate
growth, especially in bust times, the opposite would be the case.

Leaving Kuttner aside, let us examine a more mainstream
example of the deviation of neo-liberal economics from
Keynesian orthodoxy. The New Republic's Noam Scheiber was
recently up in arms about a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by
Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the president's Council of
Economic Advisors. Scheiber savages Hubbard for defending
the Bush tax cut and not conceding that it is responsible for the
decline in the surplus, an event he accuses Hubbard of not
considering important enough in the first place. He conveniently
downplays the effect slower growth has had on revenues and
ignores the role of government spending altogether. In fact, the
surplus is $57 billion smaller due to spending increases as
opposed to the $40 billion cost of the tax rebates.

Moreover, the tax rebates were primarily a Democratic idea.
When the Treasury Department gave credit for them to President
Bush in the letter that accompanies the rebate checks,
Democratic leaders cried foul. The main component of Bush's
proposal was lower marginal rates, the results of which have yet
to be measured.

Scheiber doesn't need to get into all those details, as he may
confuse us dummies on the right. He contends that authors of
"supply-side screeds" are either "shamelessly dishonest or just
not particularly bright." After all, "no one capable of stringing
together two sentences... could honestly believe" such gems as
"...articles attributing the late '90s economic boom to the Reagan
tax cuts of the early '80s..." This is a textbook example of
constructing a straw man.

No serious conservative maintains that Reagan's tax cut from the
1980s suddenly led to a boom at the end of the '90s. What we
do argue, based on ample evidence, is that the lower marginal
rates resulting from the Reagan tax cut have helped to create a
general trend toward job creation, lower unemployment, higher
productivity and economic growth. The economy has
experienced longer periods of sustained growth and faster
growth rates since their enactment; in fact, the economy has been
in recession only 3 per cent of the time since then, compared to
one-third of the time historically. Clearly, there were other
factors leading to an increase in annual growth rates in the late
'90s. But 18 years of prosperity with a brief interruption (in
between two record-breaking periods of continuous growth,
incidentally) cannot be denied.

Scheiber oddly enough believes that the prosperity of the 1990s
was achieved by higher taxes. He argues, "By raising taxes and
cutting spending, Clinton signaled his commitment to reduce the
deficit, which persuaded bond traders that Alan Greenspan
wouldn't ratchet up interest rates in the future, which helped
lower long-term interest rates and stimulate economic growth."
This is an interesting departure from Keynesian economics, but it
is the party line on how Clinton ushered in economic growth.

This does not explain how both short-term and long-term interest
rates fell during the large deficits of the 1980s and the early
1990s, nor does it account for the interest rate increases
immediately after the Clinton tax increase was passed. The
economic recovery began in March 1991 and the economy grew
at a 3.7 per cent rate in the final quarter of 1992. During
Clinton's first term, the economy grew only 2.4 per cent a year.
If the economy had continued along the lines it did following the
tax increase, it would have grown 2.6 per cent annually from
1993 to 1999. Clinton's own budget documents indicate such
sub-par growth would have added $99 billion a year to the
deficit.

Consider also that our current economic problems began in mid-
2000, long before there was any indication George W. Bush
would be elected and that there would be any significant tax cut.
Interest rates rose. Economic growth declined from 5.7 per cent
in the second quarter of 2000 to 1.9 per cent in the fourth
quarter, before Bush took office. Clinton did not propose some
major tax cut to frighten the bond traders, so it strains credulity
to believe that robust growth in the late '90s and anemic growth
over the past several months were the result of Scheiber's high
taxes mean low interest rates, low taxes mean high interest rates
paradigm. When confronted with the failure of repeated interest-
rate cuts to re-ignite the economy, just as similar policies have
failed in Japan, Scheiber insists that this proves long-term interest
rates are the problem and illogically blames the Bush tax cut
enacted long after this stagnation began.

Many Republicans did foolishly predict that the Clinton tax
increase would cause a recession, but this was itself a
misapprehension of supply-side economics. The Clinton tax
increase was large in terms of gross tax take, but it left marginal
rates well below the 70 per cent Reagan found them at. The top
rate for earned income was 39.6 per cent compared to 50 per
cent and capital gains held steady at 28 per cent - thus the
Reagan tax cuts were eroded, but intact. Marginal rates are
more important to work incentives than average tax rates, as
they affect after-tax returns on additional income. Additionally,
continued disinflation lowered the cost of capital and acted as a
sort of tax cut for accelerated depreciation, offsetting the Clinton
tax hike. This was followed by a series of pro-growth initiatives
once the Republicans took Congress, most importantly lowering
the capital gains tax rate to 20 per cent in 1997. Healthy growth
then resumed - the Clinton experience does not vindicate those
who advocate higher taxes.

Scheiber also leaves unexamined Austrian economic theories of
the business cycle that may help explain our present slower
growth. The policies of easier borrowing and artificially low
interest rates that he advocates helped exaggerate growth rates
and inflate stock prices in the late '90s. This led to malinvestment
that is now being liquidated from the economy, being replaced
with sounder investments. Defenders of Clintonomics not only
pretend to offer a fiscal policy of "tax-and-don't-spend," but they
implicitly endorse credit expansion as the key to growth. It is
odd that those who once so vocally chided the Reagan
administration for presiding over an expansion in the public debt
consider massive private debt harmless.

Even if Scheiber had both the relationship between deficits and
long-term interest rates and long-term interest rates and
sustained growth correct, the fact is we still have the second-
largest surplus on record during a slow economy after issuing
$40 billion in tax rebates and increasing government spending. It
is far from clear that deficits will again become "the norm" due to
the tax cut unless solid growth doesn't resume, a scenario a high-
tax policy makes more likely. Past major tax cuts in the 1920s,
1960s, 1980s and 1990s have led to increases in growth and, in
the long run, tax receipts.

While the policy preferences for Federal Reserve meddling and
higher taxes, along with opposition to free-market policies,
remain a liberal staple, their economic recommendations seem to
be straying from traditional Keynes. Whatever the theory, they
still look like the real practitioners of voodoo economics.

W. James Antle III is a senior writer for Enter Stage Right and
can be reached at wjantle@enterstageright.com.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com