Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s trickle-down econom

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s trickle-down economics experiment is so bad the state stopped reporting

Trump's scandals are grabbing all the air time, but what is ignored is a tax plan that would make Sam Brownback proud.

http://www.salon.com/2016/10/25/kansas-gov-sa...ing-on-it/


Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, the Republican responsible for the state’s business-friendly tax policies, is now trying to erase any evidence of just how wildly unsuccessful his Reaganomics experiment has proved.

Last month the state’s Council of Economic Advisors, which Brownback created in 2011 and still chairs, quietly discontinued quarterly reports originally intended to showcase the state’s rapid economic growth. (During Brownback’s re-election campaign in 2014, the reports were scrubbed from the internet and subsequently available only upon request.)

The council issued what ended up being its last report in May.

Brownback “specifically asked the council to hold him accountable through rigorous performance metrics,” Heidi Holliday, executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, told The Topeka Capital-Journal. “Five years later, the metrics clearly show his tax experiment has failed while business leaders and local chambers of commerce across the state openly ask him to change course.”
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Brownback ran for governor in 2010 on an archaic small-state economic platform that promised widespread tax cuts for business owners and high-income earners. These cuts — amounting to cents on the dollar, essentially, for individuals — went into effect in 2012, and subsequent years of revenue losses have gutted public infrastructure and diminished quality of life in the state.

Cresent City Kid (1,620 posts)

2. Trickle Down can only be sold to voters under the impression that it's never been tried.

The longest dose of it nationally had to be under GW Bush. Reagan talked it up but got antsy when the deficit ballooned and raised taxes a little. Not enough to stave off the recession in the early 90's but he did water it down a bit. GW was all in, deficits be damned, and voila, Great Recession of 2008.

The problem with the "theory" is that it can't be applied long enough to test because it destroys the economy it claims to save. I hate that people have to be the guinea pigs there.

rusty quoin (3,548 posts)

6. The thing still true about Kansas,

You can drive I-70 and almost fall asleep because it is so perfectly straight, and level, without bumps, and you can see long range without any surprises.

Oh, that's federal money, isn't it?

Akamai (793 posts)

7. Yup! According to Thom Hartmann, Brownback ordered a series of studies

to show how wonderful his trickle down, slash taxes on the rich approach was being so successful.

Spoiler alert -- it was horrible, schools don't have enough money, the state of Kansas is having runaway deficits and now Sam Brownback wants to recall and destroy all the state reports showing how awful Brownback's stupid ideas have been to the citizens of Kansas. But the way, these are also the same ideas that Speaker Paul Ryan is touting.

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