You didn’t answer my question, so i will answer it for you. Supply side (or trickle down) economics did work. It worked when John Kennedy did it. He proposed tax cuts in 1961, and they were finally enacted in 1964. Don’t they teach history any more? It worked when Reagan did it in 1981. If it did not work, then the revenues to the government would not have doubled. When Reagan took office, the poverty rate was 14%. It peaked at 15.2%, when approx 75% of the Reagan cuts were in place. By 1985, it was back down tot he level it was when Reagan took office, and the last 3 years of his second term, it dropped each year. The poverty rate rose 3 out 4 years of the Carter administration, but fell 6 out of the 8 years of the Reagan administration. As to no one but the rich benefitting, wrong again. The real income of the median family rose $3,000 under Reagan, after having fallen that same amount between 1973-1981. Keep in mind that the median family income in 1981 was a tad over $20,000, so a REAL increase of $3,000 was meaningful! The top 0.1 percent of all taxpayers (roughly speaking those making over $200,000 a year) saw their share of income tax payments rise from 7 percent in 1981 to 14 percent in 1986. The share of taxes borne by the top 2 percent of taxpayers (roughly those making over $60,000) rose from 26 percent in 1981 to 34 percent in 1986. Taxpayers on the bottom half of the income scale saw their share of tax payments fall from 7 percent at the start of the decade to only 6 percent by 1986. The American middle class, people earning between $20,000 and $60,000 in the early 1980s saw their tax share fall from 67 percent to 60 percent between 1981 and 1986. They received the bulk of the Reagan tax cuts. If the rich ended up paying a bigger share of taxes, everyone else must have taken a bigger cut than the rich. BTW, tax “loopholes” come from congress, not the president. Trying to tie Reagan to Enron is just ridiculous. Bottom line is, supply side works. Redistributionist policies do not. No country has ever taxed itself to prosperity.
you keep bringing up the past…that is not going to work now. the way our economy is right now, if you give the rich the money, they are not going to “trickle it down” to the middle & lower class by creating jobs, etc…they are going to invest overseas, or secure it in other ways. you need to give the cuts to the middle class who do all the spending, therefore it will increase demand & that will spark growth. I’m not talking about using the money for condoms & clean needles…i’m talking taking the strain off the middle class. taxes are going to go up, period… i just think that giving the breaks to the rich & big business @ this point in time is not the way.