In The New York Times, Robert H. Frank of Cornell University repeated his perpetual argument that high tax rates on the rich do no harm to demand (not supply) because the rich can just draw down savings, year after year, to pay more taxes yet maintain a showy lifestyle. Then he resorts to the old trick of asserting there is no “credible” evidence that tax disincentives and distortions have any ill effects on the economy.

Frank asks, rhetorically, if an increase in top tax rates might reduce economic growth. And he replies, “There’s no credible evidence that it would.” This is a timeworn trick among people too intellectually lazy to look for a single academic study or statistical fact. 

As I have shown before, Mr. Frank has a history of abusing bogus statistics culled from dubious sources.

To simply assert “there’s no credible evidence,” however, is much worse than distorting the facts.

It amounts to claiming that he has the ability and the right to suppress facts not to his liking.

Over the past year I have repeatedly cited several major studies showing that pushing the highest marginal tax rates even higher is extremely dangerous to economic growth; Stanford economist Michael Boskin lists half a dozen of them in his latest Wall Street Journal op-ed. 

For Mr. Frank to assert that such studies are not “credible” simply reveals his own inability to find credible evidence to support his own untenable position.