The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act isn’t working and there’s no reason to think that will change — Hunter Blair

Didn't work before and didn't work this time. Hype.

Economic Policy Institute
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act isn’t working and there’s no reason to think that will change

Hunter Blair

Eric Schliesser — On Ibn Khaldun and Ronald Reagan (and a now obscure Belgian scholar)

Not particularly important unless you are interested in the history of economics, but it is interesting owing to the Reagan connection compared with post 9/11 Islamophobia.

Digressions&Impressions
On Ibn Khaldun and Ronald Reagan (and a now obscure Belgian scholar)
Eric Schliesser | Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Bob Bryan — One chart shows why Trump could have big trouble getting his tax plan past some Republicans

Business Insider
One chart shows why Trump could have big trouble getting his tax plan past some Republicans

Bob Bryan

Noah Smith — Supply-Siders Still Push What Doesn't Work

The old recipe of tax cuts, deregulation and fiscal austerity does little for growth.

Bloomberg View
Supply-Siders Still Push What Doesn't Work
Noah Smith

Kenneth Thomas — Kansas Republicans abandon Brownback; raise taxes over his veto

Do I have to tell you that Laffer and Moore are the main advisers behind Trump’s tax plan, too?

Angry Bear
Kansas Republicans abandon Brownback; raise taxes over his veto
Kenneth Thomas | Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis

Robert Waldmann — $ 2.1 trillion here $ 2.1 trillion there and soon you’re talking real money

They are into deep Voodoo. 

Also known as "ledgerdemain."

$ 2.1 trillion here $ 2.1 trillion there and soon you’re talking real money
Robert Waldmann

Robert Greenstein — Trump Budget Proposes Path to a New Gilded Age

President Trump’s new budget should lay to rest any belief that he’s looking out for the millions of people the economy has left behind. He proposes steep cuts in basic health, nutrition, and other important assistance for tens of millions of struggling, low- and modest-income Americans, even as he calls for extremely large tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest people and profitable corporations.

This disturbing budget would turn the United States into a coarser nation, making life harder for most of those struggling to get by but more luxurious for those at the very top. Most Americans do not seek a new Gilded Age. And the budget is sharply at odds with what the President told voters he would do during his campaign. With this budget, the President betrays many voters who placed their trust in him.

In fact, this stands as the most radical, Robin-Hood-in-reverse budget that any modern President has ever proposed. Consider the combined effects of the health, tax, and spending policies that he’s outlined:

Ultimate supply side: drastic cuts in social welfare to fund enormous tax cuts for the wealthy on the assumption that this will stimulate domestic investment and create "millions of US jobs."

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Greenstein: Trump Budget Proposes Path to a New Gilded Age
Robert Greenstein | President CBPP

Karoli Kuns — Reaganomics Inventor Excuses Kansas Failure, Says Tax Cuts Were 'Too Small'

Art Laffer doubles down on Kansas.

Crooks and Liars
Reaganomics Inventor Excuses Kansas Failure, Says Tax Cuts Were 'Too Small'
Karoli Kuns

James Kwak — Kudlow and Economics in the Trump Administration

Title should be Larry Kudow and economism.

I prefer G. W. H. Bush's "voodoo economics."

It seems some people never learn.

Baseline Scenario
Kudlow and Economics in the Trump Administration

James Kwak | Associate Professor of Law at the University of Connecticut School of Law

ht Mark Thoma at Economist's View

See also

New Yorker
Ayn Rand And Corporate Tax Cuts Won’t Mend The Economy

John Cassidy

Noahpinion
The Fundamental Fallacy of Pop Economics

Noah Smith

Edward Harrison — Supply-side economics likely to dominate Trump’s economic agenda

Same old trickle down.

Overall though, I see Trump as having been elected due to voters angry about declining income growth and job security, particularly in the rust belt states that had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. That means Trump needs to appeal to this group in some discernible way to be successful. He even said so himself on election night, talking of having only two years to make his mark. He might be able to appeal to them on cultural grounds the way Republicans have done in the past. I don’t see that being effective though given the angst still evident after seven years of recovery. But supply side isn’t going to do it either unless Trump can create enough growth that it reaches deep into the rust belt where all the manufacturing jobs have been lost. His interventions against individual companies like Carrier can only go so far. At the end of the day, he has to deliver jobs and income.

Credit Writedowns
Supply-side economics likely to dominate Trump’s economic agenda
Edward Harrison

Dirk Ehnts — A comment on the trickle-down economics of Arthur Laffer, 2017 Trump edition

Laffer’s trickle-down economics did not do well empirically. Whether a cut in taxes stimulates the economy is a different question, and also any changes in tax rates might be overcompensated by changes in government spending taking place simultaneously. This, I believe, was part of the bait-and-switch under Ronald Reagan (tax cuts for the rich, but huge increase in government spending on defence) and will be part of the Trump policy, too. Nothing new here.

econoblog 101
A comment on the trickle-down economics of Arthur Laffer, 2017 Trump edition
Dirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin

David F. Ruccio — Corporate taxes and workers’ wages

The logic may be correct in the model that is used to argue that the way to raise worker's wages is to lower corporate taxes and taxes on capital, but the model is not representational of the real world in which capital and labor operate and interact.

Occasional Links & Commentary
Corporate taxes and workers’ wages
David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics, University of Notre Dame

So what else is new?

Harris&Ewing Less taxes, more jobs, US Chamber of Commerce campaign 1939

ht Raúl Ilargi Meijer atThe Automatic Earth

Xinhua — Supply-side reform to keep Chinese economy fit

"Keynesianism won't help much in addressing medium-and-long-term economic ills. The cure lies in structural reform," the authority said.… 

Chinese economists are optimistic that supply-side structural reform will give the economy a boost.

According to the authoritative figure, the five major tasks surrounding the reform, namely reducing overcapacity, destocking, deleveraging, reducing costs and shoring up weak growth areas, will all boost China's development in the long term.

Xinhua
China Headlines: Supply-side reform to keep Chinese economy fit

Robert Reich — Paul Ryan’s 7 Terrible Ideas

Yesterday, the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, summed up his House Republican agenda – vowing to pursue legislation that would frame a stark choice for voters in 2016.





“Our No. 1 goal for the next year is to put together a complete alternative to the left’s agenda,” he said.

Despite the speech’s sweeping oratory and careful stagecraft, Ryan clings to seven dumb ideas that are also cropping up among Republican presidential candidates.
Here they are, and here’s why they’re dumb:

Voodoo economics. Cut taxes, slash social spending, privatize, and penalize the poor and elderly, in short, funnel munnie to the "job creators."

Robert Reich

Paul Ryan’s 7 Terrible Ideas

Menzie Chinn — Kansas: The Collapse Continues

Charts.

The Sam Brownback miracle growth formula is working — in reverse.

Econobrowser
Kansas: The Collapse Continues
Menzie Chinn

Podcast: My phone conversation with Paul Craig Roberts

Podcast for April 13: My phone conversation with Paul Craig Roberts.

This started out as a podcast, but it got contentious and sloppy, so I am summarizing with this podcast.

Joe Conason — Here's What Happened to One State After its Republican Governor Implemented an Extreme Tax Cutting "Experiment"

Déjà vu. Soon to be known as Laffer's Folly.

AlterNet 

Here's What Happened to One State After its Republican Governor Implemented an Extreme Tax Cutting "Experiment"
Joe Conason

Maxwell Strachan — The U.S. Is Even More Unequal Than You Realized

 But for truly shocking numbers, consider America’s even more-exclusive 0.1-percent club. Those super-duper-rich people -- we’re talking Warren Buffett rich -- saw their share of the income pot jump all the way to 8 percent in 2010 from just 2 percent in 1980. The super-duper rich swoop up smaller percentages in countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

The super-rich getting super-richer would all be well and good, except that it doesn’t appear the nation’s “wealth creators” are creating much wealth for anyone else. According to the OECD’s report, the pre-tax, inflation-adjusted incomes of the bottom 99 percent have only grown by an average of 0.6 percent per year in recent decades. Add in the top one percent, and the country's income growth rate jumps to 1 percent.

This lack of trickle-down prosperity is a key focus of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, the new manifesto by French economist Thomas Piketty that destroys the argument for supply-side economics.

The Huffington Post
The U.S. Is Even More Unequal Than You Realized
Maxwell Strachan

Congrats CNBC...you finally cancelled that idiot Kudlow!!!!

Free market capitalism may be the best path to prosperity, but it certainly wasn't the best path to ratings! LOL!!!

Bravo CNBC...you finally cancelled that idiot Kudlow!!! WTF took you so long?

(He'll probably end up on Fox Business of course. That's where all the Wall Street serving, banker apologist, neoliberal pushing sociopaths go.)

Read it and laugh here.

Hey, CNBC, now put an MMT guy in there and watch your ratings soar!