How Tea Party tax cuts are turning Kansas into a smoking ruin

How Tea Party tax cuts are turning Kansas into a smoking ruin
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-kansas-a-smoking-ruin-20140709-column.html

'"Our new pro-growth tax policy will be like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy," he promised then. Brownback's tax consultant, the supply-side guru Art Laffer, promised Kansans that the cuts would pay for themselves in supercharged economic growth.

Instead, job growth in Kansas trails the nation. The state's rainy-day fund is dwindling to zero. Month after month, revenue comes in even lower than fiscal officials' most dire expectations.'

 

Kinda makes you wonder about the intelligence of the electorate. After all, it's been 40 years . . .

 

Seems ironic that the LA Times has to go all the way to Kansas to find economic policies to criticize.

 

The beauty of this Kansas story is that Laffer himself was part of the "experiment's" design.

 

The LAT is so badly biased that nobody has subscribed for years so the business is being propped up directly by liberal groups as is the NYT. Those are trade papers now.

 

ummm the current unemployment rate in Kansas is 4.8%
The current unemployment rate in california is nearly twice that at 7.8%

And the bozo who wrote this article is trying to say that Kansas should take a page out of california's economic playbook. This article is a joke. He is going after Kansas for job creation when they are practically at full employment.

 

Californians pay the fourth-highest per capita taxes in the country, yet rank at the bottom in almost every measure of success:

1. California has the highest poverty rate in the country.
2. California has the 4th worst unemployment in the country.
3. California’s public education (K-12) is ranked 36th in the country.
4. California is ranked 47th in the country as a place to do business.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/annual-state-local-tax-burden-ranking-fy-2011

http://www.ibtimes.com/fools-gold-california-has-highest-poverty-rate-united-states-1548707

http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2...W1p2K2SFHTAx9&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=EW-QC13-EWH

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100824779

 

Those are great reasons why Kansas had no need to run its budget into the red.

 

That might be true, but the author of the article trying to make the laughable claim that tax increases in California are somehow leading them to prosperity when in reality california is the biggest train wreck in the nation.

 

Not quite his claim:

"Brownback continues to promise his citizens that growth is just around the corner. But there's no evidence that the kinds of cuts he promoted have anything to do with genuine economic growth. Indeed, it's likely that preserving the quality of crucial state services is more important. That's a policy pursued in California under Gov. Jerry Brown, who successfully pushed to raise taxes after the recession; the state's job growth since then has left Kansas and the country as a whole in the dust."

That's the only time he mentioned CA in the article. And his assertion is that CA's rate of recovery is greater than KS's rate of recovery. Clearly, CA went farther into the hole during the GR than KS did. Given KS's underlying economic strength which you have pointed out, it's reasonable to say that KS could have well afforded to at the least leave its tax rates where they were and to expect no economic harm. And a balanced budget.