Sam Brownback's Kansas Failure: at Least Sumner is Happy

     He should be ecstatic. Brownback did 1 thing he loves-big cuts in business and income taxes-which was supposed to balance the budget via Supply Side 'dynamic effects'-Sumner also loves SS policies. 

     After the dynamic effects failed to in fact take effect, Brownback is at least covering that huge budget hole the right way-raising the sales tax. 

     "How’s Sam Brownback’s Kansas miracle working out? Just great:

Kansas’s state House voted early this morning in favor of a tax bill that adds to the burden of funding state government for poor families. The bill would raise the sales tax rate from 6.15 percent to 6.5 percent. Since the poor spend more of their money on basic goods and services, they are likely to be affected disproportionately by the sales tax increase.

The legislation will raise taxes on all income groups, but the increase is particularly onerous for the poor as it follows a series of other demands the government has made on their finances, critics say.

“It’s hard to imagine that what we have right now could get worse, but this actually makes it worse,” said Annie McKay, the executive director of the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, which is a research organization in Topeka.

     "Who could have predicted that after slashing income and business taxes, the state would have trouble paying its bills? So weird. Well, at least they’re forcing poor people to make up the difference."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/12/happy-hour-roundup-624/

     You know who else should be happy? Alesina-believer in 'stimulative austerity'-and his defender, Tyler Cowen. Recently, Alesina has written a paper to explain that Eurozone austerity wasn't the failure it's taken to be. Cowen complains:

    ""I predict this paper will be ignored rather than responded to.  For a while now it has been the practice to criticize “austerity” rather than to disaggregate the policies, or describe them with greater specificity, even though that is easy to do.  And it is incorrect to describe this paper as defending austerity, rather I read it as being anti-tax hike, and suggesting that “austerity” is not a very useful concept."

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/sumner-on-fiscal-policy-studies-in.html

    Well Alesina should love Kansas where there lots of tax cuts for the rich-and tax hikes for the poor. Kind of a win-win all around for Austerians.