Kansas - The Great Experiment Ends

[Cheerful Charlie]

http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article154684809.html

TOPEKA Lawmakers rolled back Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature tax policy over his objections Tuesday night, forcing into law tax increases to fix a budget shortfall and provide more money for schools.
The legislation ends the "march to zero" income tax cuts that Brownback heralded for much of his time as governor.

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Brownback fought the end of his Great Experiment with a veto that was overridden.

Now, if only we can prevent Trump from Brownbacking America with his massive tax cut plans.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article154684809.html#storylink=cpy
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[blastula]

The experiment results show that Brownback failed conservatism.

 

[Shadowy Man]

The experiment results show that Brownback failed conservatism.

Maybe they just didn't wait long enough. I'm sure just a few more years of suffering and it would start paying off, right?

 

[repoman]

Leftist business owners left the state to break the back of a great man with a great vision /s

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

The experiment results show that Brownback failed conservatism.

Maybe they just didn't wait long enough. I'm sure just a few more years of suffering and it would start paying off, right?

Believe it or not, Arthur Laffer, who set Kansas on this course of disaster, said exactly that. Moving those goalposts.

Somewhere in one of the deeper pits of hell, Ayn Rand is having a hissy fit right now.

 

[Deepak]

Maybe they just didn't wait long enough. I'm sure just a few more years of suffering and it would start paying off, right?

Believe it or not, Arthur Laffer, who set Kansas on this course of disaster, said exactly that. Moving those goalposts.

Somewhere in one of the deeper pits of hell, Ayn Rand is having a hissy fit right now.

Just another decade and they would have made it. I'm going to have to find my high school guidance counselor and kick him in the the ass because I never knew I could make five-figure consulting fees by peddling bunco to Randroids with zero effort.

 

[repoman]

Maybe they just didn't wait long enough. I'm sure just a few more years of suffering and it would start paying off, right?

Believe it or not, Arthur Laffer, who set Kansas on this course of disaster, said exactly that. Moving those goalposts.

Somewhere in one of the deeper pits of hell, Ayn Rand is having a hissy fit right now.

Who cleans the toilets in Galt's Gulch?

 

[braces_for_impact]

It really was a great little experiment, too bad it took place on the backs of school children and the poor and middle class. They did everything the conservative orthodoxy says must be done and the state FAILED. Miserably. Instead of using it as food for thought, the same assholes want to use the same techniques on the federal government insisting it will work this time.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

http://www.khi.org/news/article/tax-bill-touted-overland-park-business-gathering/

Gov. Sam Brownback was joined today by economist Arthur Laffer at an event staged in Overland Park to advertise the potential benefits of the tax cuts the governor signed into law in May.

"This will lead to enormous prosperity," Laffer predicted, and puts Kansas at the forefront of a "revolution" that is under way in several states led by conservative Republican governors who are working to cut taxes and trim the size of government.
"You are moving into the pro-growth world, and believe me it will work," Laffer told the crowd of about 260 people at a conference hall on the campus of Johnson County Community College. "If you want to make your state healthy, go for a zero income tax."
The governor described the tax cuts as a "shot of adrenaline to the heart" of the state's economy and shared the dais throughout the afternoon with panelists who largely agreed with him, though Tom Ruhe, vice president of entrepreneurship at Kansas City's Kauffman Foundation, said surveys showed the biggest obstacle to business expansion cited among the nation's leading new companies was the difficulty finding good employees. Taxes and government regulation were lesser concerns, he said.

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http://www.khi.org/news/article/brain-behind-brownback-tax-cuts/

Laffer has a long history of furiously peddling this nonsense to any GOP run state who will listen to him. And he had help. ALEC.

This is an interesting article detailing the history of Laffer and his peddling of Trickle Down economics far and wide. It's kind on nice to know for when the usual crawdadding starts from the economic far right.

 

[Ford]

Jeez, you left-wing liberal nanny-state advocates don't get it, do you?

Of course Kansas' experiment failed.

Brownback cut taxes, but he didn't eliminate them altogether. That's half the reason this thing didn't work. I mean, we all know that all taxes are bad, so cutting taxes was clearly not enough...there needed to be no taxes at all in order for Kansas to become Libertopia.

Now you may be saying "yeah, but without taxes, what will fund government?" Good question! As Saint Norquist has said, government is bad. It must be shrunk down to tub-drowning size and eliminated. The massive tax increases imposed on the fine people of Kansas just now were voted on by the legislature, and legislature is part of government, and government is bad.

So long as taxes and government exist in the state of Kansas, it will never become a shining example of what Libertopia could be. The dream will remain out of reach until we're brave enough to not just cut taxes, but eliminate them. To not just shrink government, but actually drown it in a small tub. We've just got the sticky issue of who will supply the tub.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't feel like researching Kansas right now, so I'll just ask - were tax cuts accompanied by spending cuts?

Total Taxes = Total Spending

If one doesn't move, the other doesn't move.

Total Taxes = Direct Taxes + Indirect Taxes

If you cut Direct Taxes but don't cut Total Taxes, that means you're simply shifting the burden from Direct Taxes to Indirect Taxes.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Yes they cut spending, but the loss of revenue was not made up in economic growth, so they kept falling behind.

 

[Ford]

I don't feel like researching Kansas right now, so I'll just ask - were tax cuts accompanied by spending cuts?

Total Taxes = Total Spending

If one doesn't move, the other doesn't move.

Total Taxes = Direct Taxes + Indirect Taxes

If you cut Direct Taxes but don't cut Total Taxes, that means you're simply shifting the burden from Direct Taxes to Indirect Taxes.

Again, the fact that they didn't eliminate all taxes is why they failed.

Taxes are bad...always. Cut taxes 100 percent, then cut government 100 percent, and Libertopia will happen.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I don't feel like researching Kansas right now, so I'll just ask - were tax cuts accompanied by spending cuts?

Total Taxes = Total Spending

If one doesn't move, the other doesn't move.

Total Taxes = Direct Taxes + Indirect Taxes

If you cut Direct Taxes but don't cut Total Taxes, that means you're simply shifting the burden from Direct Taxes to Indirect Taxes.

Again, the fact that they didn't eliminate all taxes is why they failed.

Taxes are bad...always. Cut taxes 100 percent, then cut government 100 percent, and Libertopia will happen.

In that post, I didn't argue that taxes are always bad. I argued that if you only cut (direct) taxes and not spending you don't achieve any sort of tax cut goal.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher...

http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article154684809.html

TOPEKA Lawmakers rolled back Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature tax policy over his objections Tuesday night, forcing into law tax increases to fix a budget shortfall and provide more money for schools.
The legislation ends the "march to zero" income tax cuts that Brownback heralded for much of his time as governor.

But I flew too hiiiiiiiigh

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Well that rather proves my point, which as nothing to do with the theories of Laffer. The state of Kansas didn't follow the "Total Taxes = Total Spending" equation when cutting direct taxes.

 

[Ford]

Well that rather proves my point, which as nothing to do with the theories of Laffer. The state of Kansas didn't follow the "Total Taxes = Total Spending" equation when cutting direct taxes.

The point of the whole experiment was to prove that cutting taxes would stimulate the Kansas economy. When it began, conservatives were looking ahead to the day when they could point to Kansas and say "see, we told you so."

The experiment failed.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Well if only the USSR had been ruled by real communism, they would be here now to tell us where we went wrong.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Well that rather proves my point, which as nothing to do with the theories of Laffer. The state of Kansas didn't follow the "Total Taxes = Total Spending" equation when cutting direct taxes.

The point of the whole experiment was to prove that cutting taxes would stimulate the Kansas economy. When it began, conservatives were looking ahead to the day when they could point to Kansas and say "see, we told you so."

The experiment failed.

Since Total Taxes = Total Spending, the fact that they had a budget shortfall shows they didn't cut Total Spending and therefore didn't cut Total Taxes.

If you're going to cut taxes, you have to cut taxes. You can't redistribute the taxes and call it a tax cut.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Well that rather proves my point, which as nothing to do with the theories of Laffer. The state of Kansas didn't follow the "Total Taxes = Total Spending" equation when cutting direct taxes.

Here's what Kansas did: The cut out taxes on businesses believing that his would spurn more economic activity. Since businesses had extra money they believed that it would lead to more hiring. (This is wishful thinking because business owners don't tend to hire dead weight, but hire people when they need them.) These new employees would be making wages that could be tracked which would lead to more tax revenue. The did cut spending, but were surprised that the loss of revenue from taxes was greater than they had planned for. This lead to a downward spiral.