A Free-Market Failure In The Heartland
Trickle down economics didn’t work in Kansas. It never has. Not anywhere.
It was every supply-side economist’s dream: the promise of achieving economic nirvana by slashing taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and shrinking government. Except it became a nightmare for the people of Kansas, and now the Kansas Legislature has taken a big step toward waking up from it.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback turned his state into a laboratory for the most extreme form of trickle-down economics, promising that it would usher in an economic boom. It didn’t. It never has. Brownback’s five-year experiment caused state revenue to plummet, the deficit to explode, and painful spending cuts to be made—including cuts decimating public schools. Last week, a once-unlikely alliance stopped Brownback’s attempt to double down on his plan: Democratic and Republican lawmakers, urged on by parents, business people, civic activists and unions of working people.
You would think that this revolt by Kansas’ citizens and legislators of both parties would send chills up supply-siders’ spines nationwide. But the essential tenets of Brownback’s plan remain at the center of the tax proposals championed by President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Granted, these free-market tenets are well-established conservative orthodoxy. But, as the Kansas experiment demonstrates, they offer a false promise and lead not to prosperity but to deep austerity.
The Kansas economic plan was intended to serve as a model for other anti-government forces. Instead, it presents lots of inconvenient facts. State revenues plunged $700 million in the first year alone, resulting in deep cuts to everything from road repair to state psychiatric hospitals. The state budget deficit climbed to nearly $900 million. And, while economic growth nationally has remained steady at just above 2 percent annually, A Free-Market Failure In The Heartland | HuffPost:
