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The War on Poverty Has Been a Colossal Flop

Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty. This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise...

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ORIGINAL: cloudboy


Conservative Experiment Faces Revolt in Reliably Red Kansas

• “He’s leading Kansas down,” said Mr. Hastings, 68, who said he voted for Mr. Brownback four years ago, when he easily won his first term. “We’re going to be bankrupt in two or three years if we keep going his way.”

• Although every statewide elected official in Kansas is a Republican and President Obama lost the state by more than 20 points in the last election, Mr. Brownback’s proudly conservative policies have turned out to be so divisive and his tax cuts have generated such a drop in state revenue that they have caused even many Republicans to revolt.

• In some ways, it is unsurprising that many Kansas Republicans have turned on Mr. Brownback. This is a state that once had a tradition of centrist Republicans, like former Senator Bob Dole, and has had five Democratic governors over the past half-century.

• But much of this moderation went by the wayside as Mr. Brownback and conservative majorities in the Legislature turned the state into a laboratory for the policies they had run on. In addition to passing the largest income tax cuts in state history, they have made it easier to carry guns in public buildings, turned over management of Medicaid to private insurance companies, made it more difficult to get an abortion, and made it harder to qualify for public assistance.

• Most criticism of Mr. Brownback has centered on the tax cuts, which slashed individual income tax rates and eliminated taxes on nonwage earnings for nearly 200,000 small businesses. The most recent fiscal year ended with state revenues more than $300 million short of expectations.

• Based on decreased revenue from the tax cuts, the state’s nonpartisan legislative research department estimates that the budget will have to be adjusted by $1.3 billion, either through spending cuts or additional revenue, over the next five years in order to remain balanced.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/us/conservative-experiment-faces-revolt-in-reliably-red-kansas.html?_r=0

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ORIGINAL: Sanity

Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise...

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

I dont know that the Laffer Curve is incorrect, in fact I would say it is definitely correct, it is simple the min-max find the area under the curve from calculus.

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

The problem isn't Laffer or bell curves as they are irrelevant. It is spending and by both sides and at every level. This country's original conservatism held that minimal govt. could be paid for with a reasonable (small) tax on business and NO income tax.

That conservatism held true for about 130 years until the bankers finally did take over. (1913) both political parties have been their whores ever since. They simply have their own constituency to sooth with their financial salve at taxpayers expense. (the first rates were the lowest of 1% and the highest 7%, the latter not kicking in until $500,000)

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ORIGINAL: mnottertail

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ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

The problem isn't Laffer or bell curves as they are irrelevant. It is spending and by both sides and at every level. This country's original conservatism held that minimal govt. could be paid for with a reasonable (small) tax on business and NO income tax.

That conservatism held true for about 130 years until the bankers finally did take over. (1913) both political parties have been their whores ever since. They simply have their own constituency to sooth with their financial salve at taxpayers expense. (the first rates were the lowest of 1% and the highest 7%, the latter not kicking in until $500,000)

Close, but no cigar. The original conservatism (actually wholesale Americanism) held that we could pay for everything by making the people who wanted access to our markets pay an ante in the form of duties and tariffs, and that in cases of war and so on, a tax might have to be appended to AMERICAN businesses, for their favor of having relatively untrammelled markets here.