Customer Reviews

The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book by two professors of public policy convincingly demonstrates that supply-side economics and the policies pursued by Republicans and conservatives for the past 30 years have failed and in doing so have badly damaged the U.S. economy and society.
Using numerous graphs and charts the authors reach many surprising conclusions:
-- cutting taxes produces more government, not less. As they say, the programs funded can be those favored by liberals like social programs and welfare benefits and health care or by conservatives such as prisons, police and the military. But the budgetary implications are the same. This surprising assertion is fully backed up by the data.
-- the authors compare the records of the Republicans in the current decade and Democrats in the 1960s and find similarities but one important difference. Both funded wars (in Iraq and Vietnam) and expanded education and health programs but the Democrats funded their programs from taxes while the massive increase in government under George W. Bush has been funded through borrowing. The result is a massive increase in the budget deficit and the national debt which will be borne by future generations.
In fact, the authors demonstrated irrefutably that cutting taxes has never led to increased tax revenues as the Reagan and Bush administrations both said they would. They lead only to deficits.
-- the data shows the greater the Republican control of Congress the higher the growth of spending. So those "fiscal conservatives" who care about small government have been doing the exact opposite of what they intended.
-- Bush is the second biggest-spending president since 1945, second only to Johnson. The two presidents under whom real discretionary spending rose the least were Carter and Clinton.
This book sometimes makes for difficult reading, which is its major fault. It's not written in a particularly user-friendly style and the frequent charts and graphs may be off-putting.It's as if the authors were not clear whether they were writing for specialists or a wider audience. If the latter, more care should have been taken to make the book more readable.
It's unfortunate the style is so academic because the message needs to penetrate a wider audience. Bottom line: these failed policies have reduced the fiscal solvency of the federal government, eroded middle class living standards, vastly increased income inequality and left millions of Americans facing the greatest danger to their living standards since World War II. They could in future leave the U.S. economy paralyzed by the interest payments needed to finance a massive national debt.
Time to wake up, folks!

I have very little policy experience; I read this book for a class on public policy. Having no experience, I found it to be a great help in understanding how we got to the place we are. It traces through the post-WWII years up to current times, detailing how the approach to policymaking has changed over the years. I now have a whole new appreciation for the fiscal state of our country, and if nothing else, this book is valuable to someone who hasn't paid much attention to politics just for that. It's pretty readable for the average person which is very nice; there are only a few spots where it helps to have a background in public administration theory.

I chose this book to read because, of those I had to choose from, it seemed the least likely to be hell-bent on bashing Republicans. It did a relatively good job of remaining neutral, but at times the political bent of the authors was clear.

I think this is pretty darn good book, and I'm glad I had a class to force me to read it. I gave it 4 stars because a few questions that were left unaswered for me - is everything REALLY only a result of policy, or can fads among the public steer things too?

There are few books that stun me with poor analytics before I get beyond the introduction. This book did. Silly thinking expressed by these authors is the staement that, as a "clear example of regressivity" of the Bush tax cuts, those earning over $500,000/year got $118,000 from the cuts while the mddle 20% received only $740 in benefits. They quote the Tax Policy Center for these numbers, an institution I respect. This ignores, of course, the problem that the highest income categories pay far more than their income as a percent than do middle income taxpayers. For example, the TPC estimates for 2010 are that those earning $1MM or more pay $818,000 in federal taxes (income, payroll taxes, interest, dividends, capital gains, estate, etc.), or 26.9% of income. Middle income taxpayers (average income of $62,995) pay $10,223 in taxes, $4,800 of which is in Social Security and Medicare taxes (for which they have an entitlement for future benefits), which is 16.2% of total income. How do you get a regressive tax system out of this? Answer: You don't.

How can you get a "refund" for taxes you haven't paid? Of course the rich got most of the tax cuts. BECASUE THEY PAY MORE, FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!! Millionaires earn 11.8% of pre-tax income AFTER the tax cuts, yet they pay 16.3% of all personal taxes paid. The middle income group earns 12.0% of pre-tax income but pays only 10% of taxes. And the middle class expects to get most of that back later in the form of Social Security and Medicare. This is not regressive - it's a progressive tax system. This is all from the TPC research, which the authors twisted to make sound supportive of their position.

Before I get trashed for Tea Party thinking, I am a Third Way Democrat and fully disagree with supply side economics, and I believe US taxpayers at all levels except the poor should pay higher taxes. The political nonsense that's going on today is appalling. For example, most people feel that the 2010 year-end tax deal benefited the rich. Guess what: Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found that 75% of the $858B in tax benefits went to the middle class, who benefit from lower marginal tax rates, the 2% rollback in payroll taxes and extension of unemployment benefits and credits.

The CBO reports that the middle class taxpayer pays at the lowest level in several decades. It's also the lowest level for the rich. We all need to pay more if we want more public services.

Is there great income disparity in the US? Absolutely? Do the rich pay a disporortionately high share of income in taxes? Absolutely. But don't misrepresent our system as being regressive. It's just not true. You can't cherry pick reductions in rates as being regressive. It's what people pay at the end of the day.

When you see evidence of faulty thinking so early in their work, be very suspicious that you'll be reading a polemic screed.

Written by an economist and a political scientist, "The Politics of Bad Ideas" provides an in-depth look at the origins and effects of tax-cut ideology. It details how and why tax cuts generally do not accomplish the benefits attributed to them, but instead are counter-productive from an economic point of view. It explains how the U.S. government, especially during the administration of George W. Bush, wedded itself to an economic theory with such flimsy foundations. And it argues that the Bush administration more broadly embraced a theory of "responsive competence" in which government officials are expected to reject evidence-based policy making and instead follow the political lead of those above them, no matter what the real-world effects of their policies. The writing is uneven in quality (hence the four stars, not five), but if you want to understand how we got ourselves into our current fix, I recommend this book.