Evidence

In NRO Larry Kudlow reported Evidence, Evidence, and More Evidence
Lower tax rates spur economic growth. End of story.

An opinion piece by reporter Anna Bernasek in last Sunday’s New York Times actually argues that there’s no real evidence that lower tax rates spur economic growth. Bernasek finds a couple of economists to back up her idea before concluding that tax “reform based on a notion that taxes are bad for the economy is just that: a notion not backed by strong evidence.”

Let me beg to differ in a very strong way.... In our capitalist free-market system, strengthening the link between effort and reward has proven to work time and again. I respectfully disagree with Anna Bernasek and the New York Times. More tax freedom will always fuel our free economy.

Extreme Leftwing Matthew Yglesias blogged I'm sticking with my line that conservative lack of substantive policy knowledge is a much bigger problem than the liberal lack of philosophizing. To get a good sense of where things have gotten to, take a look at Larry Kudlow coming out against "academic-style econometric finagling" as a way to assess the impact of tax rates on economic growth. After all, who needs finagling when you've got "the laws of common sense." Needless to say, only a lunatic like Paul Krugman would think that contemporary conservatism has become hostile to the basic methods of scholarly inquiry.... He cites a few academics in defense of his proposition, which is good of him, but then he goes on to disparage the very concept of engeging in "academic-style" reasoning, which he prefers to call "finagling." Obviously, Kudlow cares not a whit about what the actual empirical research shows

At least Kudlow specifically cited a few academics in defense of his proposition. Yglesias does not cite ANY sources for what he calls the actual empirical research

Kevin Drum blogged Matt is right to point to this piece of nitwittish writing from Larry Kudlow, one of National Review's seemingly endless stable of embarrassing shills on economic matters. Commenting on a perfectly sound and well backed up article in the New York Times that highlights the embarrassing lack of evidence to support the notion that tax cuts increase economic growth, Kudlow says

That is a good way to show you know what you are talking about. You belittle the opposition. Kevin does go on to at least quote some sources to try to prove his point that there is no correlation between taxes and growth, showing a graph indicating "declining growth rates" and then saying "the total tax take in the United States has only gone up from 24% of GDP to about 28% of GDP in the past half century. That's just not enough to have much of an effect on anything" and then ends with "we have plenty of scope to raise taxes if it's necessary to fund programs we want to fund." which shows the left's real objective - raise taxes to fund programs THEY want to fund.

apostropher blogged You'd think that the right-wing clown brigade would eventually get tired of being wrong about everything. But you'd be mistaken.

Another ad hominum attack