Romney: "Obama supporters are dependent on the government"

[Aloha_Shooter]

Not sure what you're saying here. You said in a previous posts "return to Reaganesque rates". I asked which of the rate schemes you were referencing, and pointed out the rates that were in existence at the time. If you meant "tax revenues" instead of rates, I do understand the difference. I can't, however, read your mind.

Most commentators I've read or heard in the past 10-15 years have referred to the rates at the end of Reagan's second term, i.e., 28%. I'm not sure why you think "Reaganesque revenues" would have clarified a difference in your mind or why you think of 50% as a Reaganesque rate.

Tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have typically been around an average of 18%, regardless of tax rates. We're low now, but with the recovery of the economy expected to be back at 18% by 2020.

http://www.heritage.org/federalbudge...t-tax-receipts

When you say this, it comes across like there's some magic that hold tax receipts at 18% of GDP. In fact, the chart you link to shows quite the opposite with a high degree of variability ranging from 14.4% to 20.6% of GDP. In other words, actual receipts vary around the presumed long term average of 18.1% of GDP by roughly 14%.

Tax receipts decreasing with rate increases have been well documented for a long time. This relationship was thrown off in the mid 90s because the economic stimulus of the dot-com boom was largely (and somewhat uniquely) independent of tax rate increases under Bush I and Clinton. You can see from that graph that tax receipts increased from roughly 16% to over 18% of GDP after removal of the Clinton tax rate increases, tax receipts dropped after Johnson's Great Society tax rate increases, etc.

Economics is about an accurate of a field as weather forecasting.

On this point we agree. To quote Pournelle, we may as well have a Chief Astrologer at the White House as a Chief Economist (and yes, he said that before the kerfuffle about Nancy Reagan's astrologer).