They’re fucking insane, that’s what:
Two years ago Kansas embarked on a remarkable fiscal experiment: It sharply slashed income taxes without any clear idea of what would replace the lost revenue. Sam Brownback, the governor, proposed the legislation — in percentage terms, the largest tax cut in one year any state has ever enacted — in close consultation with the economist Arthur Laffer. And Mr. Brownback predicted that the cuts would jump-start an economic boom — “Look out, Texas,” he proclaimed.
But Kansas isn’t booming — in fact, its economy is lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole. Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.
There’s an important lesson here — but it’s not what you think. Yes, the Kansas debacle shows that tax cuts don’t have magical powers, but we already knew that. The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people.
As Albert Einstein is often credited with saying: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” This bit of supply-side orthodoxy has already been tried again and again, and with disastrous fiscal results (for example, the massive deficits that resulted from the Bush tax cuts). Meanwhile the opposite strategy—the Clinton tax hikes—were followed by the longest economic expansion in US history, along with several years of budget surpluses.
Some might argue that Seattle is embarking on a remarkable experiment too, but that’s not entirely true. Washington State has long had one of the highest minimum wages in the nation, yet our economy has outperformed both neighboring states and the nation as a whole. In fact, last year Seattle was the fastest-growing big city in America. As Nick Hanauer recently wrote in Politico: “Fifteen dollars isn’t a risky untried policy for us. It’s doubling down on the strategy that’s already allowing our city to kick your city’s ass.”
Unfortunately, Seattle’s demand-side strategy just isn’t perceived to serve the direct interests of “the right people” (you know, the rich and powerful). So whatever the results here, it’s hard to see the people of Kansas following our lead.
Nick Hanauer pays an avg. of $11/hr at his pillow company’s out of state factories, meaning many people make less than $11/hr if that’s the avg. He could change this with 1 phone call. The hypocrisy of him pushing for others to pay $15/hr while refusing to do so himself is laughable. Funny how he wants to take credit for being this progressive but wants that credit without actually having to take any action himself, or alter his business practices, he justs others to.
re 1– …and how does your comment address the larger question posed in this post?
You know — the one about how ‘cutting taxes improves the economy’ is a lousy and discredited idea that only serves the rich.
The headline was ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’, not that some employer is a hypocrite. Your diversionary attempts to highjack the thread are tiresome and entirely predictable.
I think the hallmark of a poor economy comes with building sports arenas (especially ahead of a real tenant being committed) and having sports teams echoing tropes about native americans as exemplified by boyscout-connections (Chiefs ?).
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/l.....egyn-kelly
Megyn Kelly Squares Off With Bill Ayers
What? Steve Doocy was busy?
Wrong thread.
I got nothin’. To me it looks like the left has a really good point – Kansas has been brought up before (Better?).
I read stuff like cap gains pushed into 2012 to avoid increases in 2013, so less 2013 taxes paid in 2014. Not buyin’ it.
Can someone with a flyover state background comment on the stuff they thought would grow to replace revenue lost to tax cuts, that didn’t materialize?
@4 The same stuff Boeing said would materialize after their $8.7 billion subsidy by WA, of course.
The Krugman article concluded that this sort of wonderment:
misses the point of what’s going on in Kansas. The “same thing” is working nicely for those that are promoting it and they expect nothing else. That ‘thing’ being to make the rich richer off the rest of society while at the same time fooling all and media besides with (amply discredited) economic persiflage. No insanity, just bold thievery.
I don’t have anything to add except
If enough people in Kansas feel enough pain, they will get fed up and elect different people to try a different policy, unless the current politicians find a way to disenfranchise the voters.
And disenfranchisement will lead to structural conflicts.
[Deleted — off topic, see HA Comment Policy]
Kansas is what happens when government is taken over by anti-regulation, anti-democracy, sociopathic demagogues fronting for private, big-money interests. Seattle, and Washington state as a whole, has yet to fall into that vortex of greed, stupidity, and hubris, despite Tim Eyman’s et al. best efforts. But I fear it is only a matter of time. Too many forces at the federal level are lining up against islands like Washington state. Yesterday’s Supreme Court’s ruling on domestic-help unions is just one of many examples. And it doesn’t matter which party is in control – sure, bad things happen more quickly when republicans are in control but democrats are just more leisurely and sneaky in furthering pro-corporation, anti-worker agendas. For example, don’t forget it was a democratic adminisstration that pushed hard to cut Social Security benefits as part of a Grand Bargain, it was a democratic administration that hired a corporatist like Rahm Emanuel to run the White house and goons like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to oversee fiscal policy, and it was and is democratic administrations pushing free-trade agreements like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. And let’s not forget Common Core and the charter school privatization schemes which are front and center in a democratic administration’s education policy.
I really wish I had a viable national party to support and rally behind but the reality is I don’t. I’m done playing kick-the-football with Lucy holding the ball. I don’t want to live in Kansas, but Kansas is just the canary in the coal mine. Places like Washington state are increasingly looking like the land of Oz, fabulous and far away, but a place the rich and powerful will not permit to exist.
The GOP is insane … this is news? That’s like announcing the invention of stone tools.
@8 If enough people in Kansas get fed up, they’ll move elsewhere and Kansas will be depopulated. Oh wait, that’s already happening, Kansas ranks 31st in population growth versus Washington’s 7th place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L.....rowth_rate
When historians look back on this era in national politics, they will note that an obstructionist House of representatives and a filibustering minority of republicans in the Senate prevented jobs, economic recovery, infrastructure improvements, immigration reform, tax reform and promoted an environment for making rich people richer and keeping corporate taxes as low as possible.
All of the republican machinations are done to implement the Kansas model on a national scale – bankrupt the government, cut taxes for the rich and corporations and use the deficit to prevent the government from actually helping anyone.
@12
Most likely in your hurry to be snarky you failed to note that Kansas’ population is growing.
That’s the opposite of depopulating, dumbass.
Had you slowed down you might have thought to check out why people are staying around in Kansas:
Most of them have jobs. Unemployment rate is 4.8%, vs 6.1% in fast-growing WA. Dumbass.
@14 If Kansas is such a paradise, why are more people coming here than going there?
Yes, Kansas’ population is growing. But its population growth rate is below the median U.S. population growth rate. That means Kansas is depopulating relative to the rest of the U.S.
Why is Kansas’ jobless rate so low? Simple, the unemployed go elsewhere, because in Kansas, if you don’t work on the family farm, there are no other jobs. And the farmers are kept afloat by what? Ethanol mandates and crop subsidies, paid for by urban taxpayers in other states.
@ 15 Rabbit once again you are making facts up (like the 5yr 60% increase in groceries & rent or that Washington hadn’t raised the minimum wage in 7yrs), it’s like you don’t think we all have Google or something.
The avg. us population growth rate is .74%/yr, well below Kansas’s growth rate, so it’s population is growing & they still have lower unemployment than here.
Basically Bickle called you out for saying Kansas was depopulating, and now I am calling you out for making sh*t up to try to support your original mistake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.....ted_States
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
@16,
I notice your link says nothing about population *growth*. Now who’s making shit up?
People QuickFacts Kansas USA
Population, 2013 estimate 2,893,957 316,128,839
Population, 2012 estimate 2,885,398 313,873,685
Population, 2010 (April 1) 2,853,116 308,747,716
Population, percent change, April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2013
Kansas USA
1.4% 2.4%
Population, percent change, April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012
Kansas USA
1.1% 1.7%
Oh, and lookee here:
Kansas USA
Persons under 5 years, percent, 2012 7.0% 6.4%
Persons under 18 years, percent, 2012 25.1% 23.5%
Sure looks like Kansas has a pretty high birthrate, but many of those kids get the hell out of dodge because *there are no jobs*.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/20000.html
Are you a liar or just stupid?
This is kind of cool.
WA has a steeper line
@ 18 did you not see the part where Kansas has a low unemployment rate of 4.8% despite higher than national avg population growth? So I am not sure why you would say there are no jobs, “but many of those kids get the hell out of dodge because *there are no jobs*.
So you are wrong, there are jobs, in fact enough that Kansas has an unemployment rate a full 2% lower than the rest of the country, and 1.3% lower than Washington.
The article referenced in Goldy’s post states that: “Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.”
This is, after all, the POINT that the article makes: that the tax cut did not produce more tax revenue as predicted to Governor Brownback by conservative economist, Arthur Laffer. In fact, it plunged the state into debt.
Would you listen to a financial planner who told you that the way to increase your revenue would be to spend all of your money and get rid of your job?
Governor Brownback did.
@20 – Let’s see – Kansas has no population, so why would they need any demand for jobs, hence less unemployment. On the contrary if Kansas were growing would the unemployment rate go up possibly because the job market wouldn’t support it. It’s kind of like making woman keep their legs crossed, they probably have a lower rate of abortion. But hey no one is fucking in Kansas.
@21 – well said, but if you are a Republican you don’t want to talk about it…..shhhhhhh, let’s talk about the population rate of Fucking backwards Kansas
@15 Roger has a valid point. In the 1930’s the “Okies” didn’t just shuffle to a different part of Oklahoma, but it took a lot to make them head west. If you grew up in a little farm town in the middle of the continent, a big coastal city would look about as remote as Mars, not to mention that you’d probably been implanted since infancy with the notion that such places were populated by the minions of Satan. Heck, there are plenty of people in Yakima who’d never set foot in this den of iniquity west of the Cascades if they could possibly help it.
To trigger another mass exodus would require not only economic hard times (which, make no mistake, the majority of Americans are already experiencing) but some kind of natural or man-made catastrophe that would make survival in place completely impossible. That may turn out to be Dust Bowl 2.0 if the more pessimistic predictions are correct regarding exhaustion of the Ogallala aquifer.
@20 Out-migration due to lack of job opportunities would produce a low unemployment rate. Once all the unemployed have left a state, you’ll have a state with no unemployment. That doesn’t make it a jobseeker’s paradise.
@24 The Ogallala Aquifer is a renewable resource, and a crucial one, but we’re going to wreck it anyway — even if the blockheads who want to build an oil pipeline across it don’t get their way. There might be some hope, though, that the Bristol Bay salmon fishery won’t be sacrificed to mining profits — provided that Republicans don’t take control of our government.
It’s just a matter of time before robots take over farming in places like Kansas and all you stupid humans move to cities for make-work jobs.
The recession of 2000-2002 was caused by the Clinton surpluses. Modern economies with fiat currencies perform best with mild to modest deficits.