Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
There is such a thing as the Laffer Curve, which demonstrates that too-high taxation drives people into tax avoiding behaviors, lowering the overall take. So in some situations, lowering taxes really does increase revenues. However, some people take this as a fundamental truth, that lower taxes will always produce more money, a thought so illogical and self-evidently false that it's kinda hard to argue with.

Historically, we're at very low levels of taxation right now. So arguing that further tax cuts will yield more revenue has more to do with posturing and dogma than anything empirical. The Bush tax cuts, which heavily favored high-income earners and investment revenue, failed to yield a significant gain in revenues, which would indicate that the U.S. was already at or below the optimal point on the curve.
Not exactly true. Or, at least, not confirmed.

There was an anticipated dip in revenues directly after the cuts (made much worse by the 9/11 recession), but they shot up dramatically during the latter half of the Bush presidency and exceeded those of the Clinton years until the financial collapse, which, of course, had nothing to do with rates. Revenues are also anticipated to grow dramatically (inflation adjusted) within the next decade based on the Bush rates if and when the economy rebounds. This would indicate that there was still room on the curve for beneficial revenue growth when Bush made his cuts.