That voodoo that you do so well
by Tom Sullivan
It was voodoo economics then. It's voodoo economics now. Conservative governors are finding out that George H.W. Bush was right about trickle-down economics as early as the 1980 Republican primaries. That hasn't stopped generations of Republican lawmakers from pursuing the policy over and over, trying to make it work. (There's an old saw about that, as I recall.) Plus, there's got to be a pony in there somewhere.
The Century Foundation's Amy Dean, writing for Aljazeera, describes the hangover Republican governors have from drinking all that tea. Those tax cuts for the wealthy haven't performed as advertised:
In Kansas, Brownback lowered tax rates for top earners by 26 percent. Now the state faces a $334 million budget deficit. Kansas’ public services are so emaciated that the State Supreme Court ruled the funding of the school system unconstitutional. Economic growth has stalled and the state’s employment growth currently ranks 34th in the nation.
[snip]
Wisconsin is experiencing similar woes from supply-side tax cuts and union busting. In 2013 the Federal Reserve ranked Wisconsin 49th in economic outlook and 44th in private-sector job growth. Wages fell 2.2 percent that year. Wisconsin is now raiding public employees’ retirement funds to make up for a budgetary shortfall of nearly $280 million. By contrast, neighboring Minnesota raised taxes on top earners in 2013 and now has one of the fastest growing economies in the nation. The state raised its minimum wage and balanced its budget without resorting to financial accounting games.
What Republican governors have resorted to is raising taxes on the middle class through consumption taxes and raiding state pension funds. Will voters remember come election time?
Not likely, writes Paul Krugman in his Monday New York Times column. Voters have notoriously short memories, and tend to judge a government's economic policies not over the long haul, but perhaps only over the two quarters leading up to the election:
This is, if you think about it, a distressing result, because it says that there is little or no political reward for good policy. A nation’s leaders may do an excellent job of economic stewardship for four or five years yet get booted out because of weakness in the last two quarters before the election. In fact, the evidence suggests that the politically smart thing might well be to impose a pointless depression on your country for much of your time in office, solely to leave room for a roaring recovery just before voters go to the polls.
Please, don't give these guys any more clever ideas.