Measured in constant 2005 dollars, real federal revenues rose from $968.4 billion in 1970 to $1,197.6 billion in 1980 and to $1508.7 billion in 1990. In other words, the cumulative real revenue gain was 23.7% under the high and rising tax rates of the 1970s, and 26% under the dramatic reduction in tax rates of the 1980s.
Paul Krugman recently looked at these same figures through his logarithmic Kaleidoscope, and concluded that “the revenue track under Reagan … is exactly what you would expect to see if supply-side economics were just plain wrong: revenues are permanently reduced relative to what they would otherwise have been.”
Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf was so awed by Krugman’s creative artwork that he imagined “the theory that cuts would pay for themselves has proved altogether wrong.”
Notice that Krugman starts his trend with 1970, which was a year of recession and falling revenue. If he had instead measured real revenue growth between the cyclical peaks of 1969 and 1979, the overall increase would have dropped to 19.5%. Note too that Krugman ends his trend with 1981 rather than 1980, while suggesting 1981 was part of the glorious Carter years:
The Carter years, contrary to legend, were not a period of economic stagnation and falling revenue because high tax rates were strangling the economy; there was a nasty recession starting in 1979, largely thanks to an oil shock, but overall growth was respectable.
The comment is strange. There was no recession in 1979, nasty or otherwise. And non-energy inflation topped 11 percent that year – before oil prices peaked in early 1980.
The continually accelerating inflation during the Carter years, 1977 to 1980, pushed more and more families into higher and higher tax brackets. It also resulted in brutal taxation of illusory, nominal capital gains and ephemeral inventory profits. As a percentage of GDP, federal taxes soared from 17.1% of GDP in 1976 to 19% in 1980 and 19.6% in 1981. Does that really look like a sustainable trend that President Reagan interrupted for no good reason?
