The Two Santa Claus Theory
May 9, 2010
In March 1976, Jude Wanniski penned a rather wonderful op-ed called
"Taxes and the Two Santa Claus Theory." This helped turn around
Republican thinking, and is still influential today. Apparently some
conservative types have been referencing it recently, and Bruce
Bartlett even rescued it from the library archives by typing it in by
hand and posting it in its entirety.
http://wallstreetpit.com/26546-jude-wanniski-taxes-and-a-two-santa-theory
The "supply side revolution" was all somewhat theoretical in those
days. So what were the results?
Here is a graph of Federal revenues and
expenditures since 1940. As I mentioned previously, the revenues are
remarkably flat as a percentage of GDP throughout the postwar period,
hovering around 18% of GDP.
January
17,
2010:
The
Futility
of
Raising
Taxes
After the Bush tax cuts of 2003, revenue rose right back to its
long-term average around 18%, and even rose slightly above to 19%.
It appears that revenue, as a percent of GDP, is about the most
predictable thing you'll ever find in economics. Note that the future
projections of revenue past 2010 show a return to 19%.
Now how about that red line? That's expenditures. Expenditures rose
steadily from 1950 to 1990, and during the 1980s averaged about 22% of
GDP. If you have a ten-year-old around, you can ask him or her what
happens when your revenues are 18% of GDP on average and your
expenditures are 22% of GDP on average. Do you think that might lead to
a budget deficit of 4% of GDP, on average? If your ten-year-old came to
this conclusion, they probably already know more about what happened in
those years than your typical Nobel-Prize-winning newspaper columnist.
Congress sets the budget for the most part, and Democrats controlled
Congress in the 1980s, as they had since the 1950s. Of course,
Democrats like to spend money on all their social programs, and also
their "economic" programs which usually amount to "more government
jobs." Republicans have their spending-reduction wing, but the party as
a whole also has a lot of people eager to spend money on military
adventures, pork, thickly padded government contracts handed out to
cronies, and of course the occasional bank bailout. (There were a lot
of bank bailouts going on in the 1980s due to their huge losses on
Latin American debt.)
Spending declined in the 1990s, at first because of the reduction of
military spending after 1990. Republicans took control of Congress in
1994, with Newt Gingrich and his spending-reduction fixation. I think
the reduction in spending during that time can also be traced in part
to the general economic success of that period, which tends to lead to
fewer demands on government for welfare or counter-recession-type
spending. In a healthy economy the political balance shifts slightly,
so the ever-present spending-reduction wing gains enough of an
advantage on the ever-present spending-increase wing that the
government as a whole reduces its outlays somewhat. Combined with the
rise in tax revenues in the late 1990s, the result was a momentary
surplus.
Indeed, I would say that there is a trend toward higher government
spending (as a percent of GDP) that begins right about 1965, and peaks
right around 1982. Then there is a trend toward lower spending that
begins around 1982 and ends around 2000. This coincides exactly with
the major bear/bull markets of the time. This is another reason for a
growth-enhancing, tax cut strategy -- it is politically easier to cut
spending. Margaret Thatcher did a lot to shrink down the U.K. socialist
state, but she started with a big tax cut.
Stable money also helped:
April
25,
2010:
Greenspan,
Summers,
Tungsten
Fakes,
and
the
Secret
Gold
Standard
What did reduced taxes do for the economy? I think you would have to
tie yourself into an intellectual pretzel to argue that Reagan's tax
cuts were bad for the economy. That leaves you with a) no effect, or b) a healthier, expanding economy.
Sometimes, the correct answer is a)
no effect. There is always some politician who has some corny
little tax cut plan -- like increasing the per-child tax deduction by
$200 -- and they want to claim that this irrelevant little nothing is
going to produce some kind of world-changing result. You saw this in
the
discussion around the 2003 Bush tax cut for example. The reductions in
capital gains and dividend taxation were significant, but the change in
income tax rates was rather minor. The top rate fell from 38.6% to 35%.
Ummmm ... whoop de doo. And yet, advocates and critics of the plan both
called it the "largest tax cut in history."
Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70% to 28%. Now that is a tax
cut. It is certainly not the kind of meaningless twiddle that has no
effect. That leaves us with b) a
healthier, expanding economy, which translates into higher GDP.
Certainly, that is the message the stock market was giving.
Go get your ten-year-old again. If he or she is getting tired from all
this heavy thinking, give them a Snickers bar to recharge their tired
brain. Then ask:
If revenues as a percent of GDP are stable, and GDP increases, then what happens to tax
revenue?
Admittedly, this is a tough one for a ten year old. And well-nigh
impossible for an academic economist.
The answer, of course, is that revenue goes up. The tax cut led to more revenue than would have been
the case if taxes were left unchanged.
This is all extremely simple and obvious, which is why I am amused that
very few people -- I would include a lot of tax-cutting Republicans in
this group -- seem to grasp it, even twenty or thirty years later.
Here is a typical recent critique of the "supply side revolution" and
the "two Santa theory."
Two Santa
Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years
One of the reasons is partisan politics. Someday I will write something
about that, but what it amounts to is that if a person doesn't like a certain aspect of another
political group's ambitions or actions, then they criticize all of that group's actions.
For example, we could say that Republican leadership in Congress and
the executive branch, over the past thirty years, has generally led to:
1) Foreign wars propped up by lies and motivated by the desire to steal
resources.
2) Attempts to reduce many government welfare-type programs which are
genuinely beneficial.
3) A tendency to encourage/allow increased environmental destruction.
4) An alliance with the Christian conservatives which can have some
unpleasant results.
5) Collusion with big business/ultra-rich to loot the taxpayer via
vastly bloated government contracts.
6) Deregulation and even encouragement of certain business practices
with negative overall results, for example predatory consumer lending.
7) Expansion of the fascist police state, exemplified by the Patriot
Act.
8) Economic exploitation of other countries, especially emerging
markets, via the IMF and other underhanded tactics (see John Perkins' Confessions
of
an
Economic
Hit
Man or Naomi Klein's Shock
Doctrine.)
9) This often leads to or is accompanied by various incursions into
national politics, up to and including assassination of political
leaders. See for example the various color-coded "Revolutions"
throughout the former Soviet states, or the U.S.'s long history of
meddling in Latin
America:
10) Aggressive attempts to disadvantage U.S. working classes via lax
immigration policies and promotion of "outsourcing" to foreign
countries.
11) The phony "War on Drugs" (the CIA is the
U.S.'s largest drug importer), combined with a vast expansion of
the prison-industrial
complex, providing a huge resource of prison
slave
labor for U.S.
companies.
12) Bank bailouts and other outright looting on the vastest scale.
You could add a few more I'm sure. The point is, there is a lot to
criticize about Republican leadership. Some might argue that it is not
really a Republican thing, but rather the goals of a certain oligarch
class, who influence and control whichever party is momentarily in
power. Democrats have supported the same policies. (The airport at Mena, Arkansas,
was a major drug import point while Clinton was governor.) However, I
would say that Republican leadership (think Bush and Cheney) have
supported these things with a certain enthusiasm and gusto, while
Democrats have mostly acquiesced grudgingly.
June
15,
2009:
Bashing
"Supply
Side
Economics"
2:
Maybe We Don't Want
Growth?
June 5, 2009: Bashing "Supply Side Economics"
I don't have much interest in U.S. politics these days. It is mostly
just a chronicle of decline. Just look at the level of discussion
regarding these tax issues. Why wade into that swamp of stupidity? Let
people suffer the consequences of their action. The real progress is
taking place elsewhere, with governments that are able to figure out
these simple principles and put them into practice. I'm thinking of
Russia, China, Brazil, several FSU countries, and maybe some smaller
locales here and there.
I'll finish here with just a brief clip regarding Greece:
This clip has some brief information about the tax code in Greece. The
top income tax rate is 40% -- which is not too high in itself, about
the same as the U.S. However, the 37% tax bracket applies to income of
only 30,000 euros! The 27% tax bracket kicks in at a mere 12,000 euros.
In the U.S., the 35% rate doesn't kick in until you have an income of
$372,951. The 28% rate applies to income of $137,000 for a married
couple. You can see the difference between the U.S. system and that of
Greece.
Wikipedia on
taxation in Greece
Wikipedia
on
taxation
in
the
U.S.
Plus, on top of that, Greece has a 21% VAT, recently raised from 19%.
But, here's something I didn't know -- Greece also has a payroll tax of
16% paid by the employee, and an additional 28% paid by the
employer! Ouch!
The back of my envelope says that amounts to a 65% marginal tax rate --
on income above 12,000 euros! Not to mention property taxes or other
local taxes.
Capital gains in Greece are taxed as regular income, but capgains on
sales of shares traded in Athens are exempt (what about shares in other
countries?). The corporate tax rate is a relatively modest 25%.
Dividends and income from ships and shipping (!) are
exempt -- nice for the oligarchs.
Of course nobody pays these taxes in full. Nobody could. It's simple
Darwinism. If you pay them, you die. The only ones left are the tax
evaders.
The most interesting part of the clip is at 8:45. The narrator says:
"These kinds of transitions from public
to private employment [if government spending was dramatically reduced]
can work, in a low tax, low regulation environment -- think of the
millions of soldiers returning from the Second World War. But, the
Greek economy is crippled by suffocating state controls and crushing
taxation."
Oddly, the narrator leaves it at that, and concludes that Greece and
the EU are doomed.
Why are Greeks in the streets? The public employees are of course
afraid of being cut off. You'd expect that. But what about the people
who aren't public employees? The IMF/EU/conventional wisdom response is
less spending and more taxes.
If you were (not) paying these ridiculous taxes, and your government
told you the way forward was even
higher taxes, what would you think?
You would think that maybe these guys are so dumb that you need to
throw a brick to get their attention.
Where's Santa Claus?
Maybe you thought I was joking when I suggested that the best path for
Greece would be a radical reduction in government spending [necessary
due to default anyway] plus a radical
tax reform, for example using just a 19% VAT with no payroll or
income taxes. No, I'm not joking. This is how you deal with these
situations.
May
2,
2010:
Thoughts
on
Greece
February
14,
2010:
The
Problem
with
Greece
If the Greek government acted like Ultimate Santa Claus, then the
spending reductons would go down a lot easier. The public employees
would still complain, but instead of joining them in the streets, the
private sector people would say "Shut up, stop complaining, get a job.
And by the way, these tax cuts are wonderful. Woo hoo!" Things would
calm down, and the economy would boom.