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A bit of trivia on trickle-down. David Stockman who allegedly was one of the primary pushers of the supply side theory aka Reaganomics aka voodoo economics aka trickle-down theory wrote a book later that said he knew at the time he was pushing it to Reagan that it was a hoax and just a way to lower taxes for the rich.
Check it out, he’s pretty blunt:
*"…The man charged to make this all work was David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director. Stockman’s genius and mastery of numbers was matched only by his relatively young age, which earned him the title of “whiz kid.” Stockman, Roberts and Anderson came up with a massively optimistic forecast for the economy, which today Stockman derisively refers to as the “Rosy Scenario.” The Rosy Scenario predicted that the 1981 tax cuts would produce 5 percent growth in 1982. (In fact, 1982 was the worst year since World War II, with negative growth of 2.2 percent.) Many budget-watchers pointed out that the tax cuts would only increase the deficit, but Stockman silenced all his critics with a blizzard of statistics and information. “Like a child prodigy chess champion playing fifty matches at once, Stockman answered every query, parried every countermove, checked every challenge,” Smith writes. "Congress was mesmerized."5 Today, Stockman admits it was all a performance. “Even the appearance of being an expert is self-validating,” he wrote five years later. "I didn’t know much about budgets, but I knew more than the rest of them."6
But as early as August 1981, Stockman began having gnawing doubts about his budget. Computer simulations failed to project the tremendous growth he had predicted, and later he would admit to cooking the numbers (!) before selling the budget to Congress. That December, the Atlantic Monthly published an article in which Stockman made several damaging and embarrassing confessions about the entire supply-side philosophy. He admitted that the 1981 tax cut “was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top [tax] rate” for the wealthy. Cutting taxes for the rich had long ago been coined “trickle down economics” - and it was an unpopular concept with the middle class. **“It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle down,’” Stockman told the interviewer. "So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really ‘trickle down.’ Supply-side is ‘trickle-down’ theory."7 **
The Rosy Scenario failed to materialize. The economy did not grow out of its deficits. In 1986, Washington and the rest of the nation would again be surprised when Stockman confessed all in a book entitled The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed."*
I think you would enjoy the article in it’s entirety. These few paragraphs don’t really do it justice.
huppi.com/kangaroo/23More.htm
Check it out, he’s pretty blunt:
*"…The man charged to make this all work was David Stockman, Reagan’s budget director. Stockman’s genius and mastery of numbers was matched only by his relatively young age, which earned him the title of “whiz kid.” Stockman, Roberts and Anderson came up with a massively optimistic forecast for the economy, which today Stockman derisively refers to as the “Rosy Scenario.” The Rosy Scenario predicted that the 1981 tax cuts would produce 5 percent growth in 1982. (In fact, 1982 was the worst year since World War II, with negative growth of 2.2 percent.) Many budget-watchers pointed out that the tax cuts would only increase the deficit, but Stockman silenced all his critics with a blizzard of statistics and information. “Like a child prodigy chess champion playing fifty matches at once, Stockman answered every query, parried every countermove, checked every challenge,” Smith writes. "Congress was mesmerized."5 Today, Stockman admits it was all a performance. “Even the appearance of being an expert is self-validating,” he wrote five years later. "I didn’t know much about budgets, but I knew more than the rest of them."6
But as early as August 1981, Stockman began having gnawing doubts about his budget. Computer simulations failed to project the tremendous growth he had predicted, and later he would admit to cooking the numbers (!) before selling the budget to Congress. That December, the Atlantic Monthly published an article in which Stockman made several damaging and embarrassing confessions about the entire supply-side philosophy. He admitted that the 1981 tax cut “was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top [tax] rate” for the wealthy. Cutting taxes for the rich had long ago been coined “trickle down economics” - and it was an unpopular concept with the middle class. **“It’s kind of hard to sell ‘trickle down,’” Stockman told the interviewer. "So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really ‘trickle down.’ Supply-side is ‘trickle-down’ theory."7 **
The Rosy Scenario failed to materialize. The economy did not grow out of its deficits. In 1986, Washington and the rest of the nation would again be surprised when Stockman confessed all in a book entitled The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed."*
I think you would enjoy the article in it’s entirety. These few paragraphs don’t really do it justice.
huppi.com/kangaroo/23More.htm