adios
10-08-2003, 07:20 AM
An op ed piece from yesterdays WSJ.
The Double Benefit of Tax Cuts
By GARY S. BECKER, EDWARD P. LAZEAR and KEVIN M. MURPHY
In their debate on economic policy last month, every Democratic candidate for president called for rolling back all or part of George W. Bush's tax cuts. All politics aside, and with the economy showing signs of recovery, perhaps now is the right time to revisit the rationale behind tax reductions and what seems to be an excessive fear of budget deficits.
Proposals for tax reductions during periods of a weak economy are inevitably followed by discussion of the stimulus effects that such cuts will have on economic activity over the next year or so. Less often is the focus on the more important issue, which is whether a tax cut helps in the long run. Tax cuts make sense for two reasons. First, government spending responds to tax revenues, so that lower revenues imply lower government spending. Second, economic growth depends on both human capital and physical capital, and investment in human capital, as well as physical capital, is responsive to tax rates. Consider each in turn.
Like any company or household, government spending is constrained by its revenue. The sum of present and future public spending, discounted by the rate of interest on government bonds, must equal the sum of present and discounted future tax revenues. This government budget equation has been recognized by economists since the pioneering work on taxation by economist David Ricardo in the early 19th century. Typically, economists take government spending as given by the needs of society, and assume that taxes, including taxes on money balances generated by inflation, adjust to this spending in order to balance the government budget equation.
Yet economic theory and empirical evidence suggest that spending often adjusts to available tax revenue rather than the other way around. Government spending responds to the ongoing political battles between taxpayers and the interest groups that benefit from government spending.
Developments in the federal budget since the early 1980s illustrate the dependence of spending on tax revenue. The Reagan tax cuts of the '80s helped promote longer-term growth, but they also increased federal deficits and subsequent interest payments on the debt. The Bush tax cuts will also help future growth, and possibly have already begun to stimulate the economy
Looking back, federal spending declined relative to GDP in the late '80s and through most of the '90s. Many observers link the moderate growth in spending over this period to the large federal budget deficits seen over most of the period and the pressure this put on lawmakers to control spending. But the primary federal budget that excludes interest had a surplus for all but three years between 1987 and 2001, while the budget including interest ran a deficit until 1998. The need to meet payments on the debt helped pressure Congress and the Clinton administration to enact welfare reform, cut defense spending, and increase efforts to rein in federal spending on Social Security and health. It is highly unlikely that any of these would have occurred without the need to adjust spending to growing interest payments on the rising debt due to continuing deficits.
Lower taxes that force cutbacks and reforms in spending programs often produce a double benefit. Besides the direct benefit from lower marginal tax rates on income, dividends, or investments, there are indirect benefits from the forced reductions in inefficient spending programs. This might be an overly generous welfare system or programs that benefit constituents of powerful members of Congress.
The looming federal deficits that many forecast today will affect the size of future federal spending. Much of the burden is likely to fall on federal entitlement programs, which take about half of all federal spending. Especially likely to be affected is the large, ever-expanding Medicare and Medicaid health systems, a Social Security system that encourages healthy workers to leave the labor force prematurely and an expanding disability system with excessively weak eligibility criteria for workers below normal retirement ages.
The same principles are applicable to state and local government spending. In fact, their spending is even more sensitive to their tax revenues since they cannot run deficits as readily as the federal government can. Booming tax revenues during the good times after 1996 not only rapidly expanded the absolute level of their spending, but also their spending relative to GDP. This ratio rose from a low of less than 12% in 1997 to a high of almost 13% in 2001. The fiscal problems facing many state and local governments, most notably California, are direct results of reckless spending while tax revenues were piling up.
The absolute effect on federal spending of shortfalls and expansions in tax revenues grew during the past 50 years because the federal budget expanded enormously over this period. This produced the sharp and seemingly inexplicable reversal of both Democratic and Republican positions on deficits. For many years, Republicans were the party of hard money, balanced budgets, and a small public debt, while Democrats wanted to prime the pump with deficits and worried little about the size of the debt. Now Republicans have become blase about deficits and the debt, whereas many Democrats are apoplectic over President Bush's tax cuts and looming federal budget deficits. Congressional Democrats also wanted to use the surpluses of the late '90s to pare down the debt.
The explanation for these reversals is that Democrats have lost faith in Keynesian-type fiscal stimulus, and are instead worried about the effects of deficits and a growing debt on future spending programs. Republicans, on the other hand, appear to be favoring a fiscal stimulus, but they are mainly trying to limit future spending on entitlement and other programs favored by Democrats.
* * *
Our second point, that human as well as physical capital is key, derives from two pieces of evidence. Human capital -- the skills embodied in individuals -- accounts for about 70% of the total capital of the U.S., and a country's economic growth is closely tied to the human capital of its population. Countries that invest heavily in educating their citizens are also those that tend to experience high economic growth following such investments. For these reasons, it is important that tax policies encourage investment in human capital. Investment in human capital is responsive to take-home pay and therefore to tax rates, with the most direct effect coming from income tax.
A highly progressive income tax structure tends to discourage investment in human capital because it reduces take-home pay and the reward to highly skilled, highly paid occupations. Students work long and hard to enter occupations such as medicine and engineering that pay high salaries. The quality of labor in these occupations is lower in countries that cap the pay to professionals because reduced pay discourages individuals from investing in skills. Highly progressive tax structures decrease the gain to acquiring skills that have valuable social payoffs. The current push toward a flatter tax structure is welcome. A flatter structure will have beneficial effects, not only because of the immediate impetus to additional work, but because it will encourage investments in the skills that lead to higher standards of living over the longer run.
The evidence is clear: Cutting taxes will have beneficial effects. Tax cuts will keep government spending in check and will provide the incentives necessary to produce a highly skilled, productive work force that enables high economic growth and rising standards of living.
Mr. Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, and Mr. Murphy are economics professors at the University of Chicago. Mr. Lazear is an economics professor at Stanford. All three are fellows at the Hoover Institution.
Updated October 7, 2003 12:21 a.m.
I've mentioned this before, tax cuts are a necessary precursor to shrinking government spending. Time and time again government has demonstrated that it will spend all available revenue and then some. I would point out that Grahm-Rudman legislation was a key part of getting spending in line as well. Whatever happened to those laws? I'll predict that Arnold, as one of his first initiatives as Governor of California will lower taxes and make California taxes more regressive.
The Double Benefit of Tax Cuts
By GARY S. BECKER, EDWARD P. LAZEAR and KEVIN M. MURPHY
In their debate on economic policy last month, every Democratic candidate for president called for rolling back all or part of George W. Bush's tax cuts. All politics aside, and with the economy showing signs of recovery, perhaps now is the right time to revisit the rationale behind tax reductions and what seems to be an excessive fear of budget deficits.
Proposals for tax reductions during periods of a weak economy are inevitably followed by discussion of the stimulus effects that such cuts will have on economic activity over the next year or so. Less often is the focus on the more important issue, which is whether a tax cut helps in the long run. Tax cuts make sense for two reasons. First, government spending responds to tax revenues, so that lower revenues imply lower government spending. Second, economic growth depends on both human capital and physical capital, and investment in human capital, as well as physical capital, is responsive to tax rates. Consider each in turn.
Like any company or household, government spending is constrained by its revenue. The sum of present and future public spending, discounted by the rate of interest on government bonds, must equal the sum of present and discounted future tax revenues. This government budget equation has been recognized by economists since the pioneering work on taxation by economist David Ricardo in the early 19th century. Typically, economists take government spending as given by the needs of society, and assume that taxes, including taxes on money balances generated by inflation, adjust to this spending in order to balance the government budget equation.
Yet economic theory and empirical evidence suggest that spending often adjusts to available tax revenue rather than the other way around. Government spending responds to the ongoing political battles between taxpayers and the interest groups that benefit from government spending.
Developments in the federal budget since the early 1980s illustrate the dependence of spending on tax revenue. The Reagan tax cuts of the '80s helped promote longer-term growth, but they also increased federal deficits and subsequent interest payments on the debt. The Bush tax cuts will also help future growth, and possibly have already begun to stimulate the economy
Looking back, federal spending declined relative to GDP in the late '80s and through most of the '90s. Many observers link the moderate growth in spending over this period to the large federal budget deficits seen over most of the period and the pressure this put on lawmakers to control spending. But the primary federal budget that excludes interest had a surplus for all but three years between 1987 and 2001, while the budget including interest ran a deficit until 1998. The need to meet payments on the debt helped pressure Congress and the Clinton administration to enact welfare reform, cut defense spending, and increase efforts to rein in federal spending on Social Security and health. It is highly unlikely that any of these would have occurred without the need to adjust spending to growing interest payments on the rising debt due to continuing deficits.
Lower taxes that force cutbacks and reforms in spending programs often produce a double benefit. Besides the direct benefit from lower marginal tax rates on income, dividends, or investments, there are indirect benefits from the forced reductions in inefficient spending programs. This might be an overly generous welfare system or programs that benefit constituents of powerful members of Congress.
The looming federal deficits that many forecast today will affect the size of future federal spending. Much of the burden is likely to fall on federal entitlement programs, which take about half of all federal spending. Especially likely to be affected is the large, ever-expanding Medicare and Medicaid health systems, a Social Security system that encourages healthy workers to leave the labor force prematurely and an expanding disability system with excessively weak eligibility criteria for workers below normal retirement ages.
The same principles are applicable to state and local government spending. In fact, their spending is even more sensitive to their tax revenues since they cannot run deficits as readily as the federal government can. Booming tax revenues during the good times after 1996 not only rapidly expanded the absolute level of their spending, but also their spending relative to GDP. This ratio rose from a low of less than 12% in 1997 to a high of almost 13% in 2001. The fiscal problems facing many state and local governments, most notably California, are direct results of reckless spending while tax revenues were piling up.
The absolute effect on federal spending of shortfalls and expansions in tax revenues grew during the past 50 years because the federal budget expanded enormously over this period. This produced the sharp and seemingly inexplicable reversal of both Democratic and Republican positions on deficits. For many years, Republicans were the party of hard money, balanced budgets, and a small public debt, while Democrats wanted to prime the pump with deficits and worried little about the size of the debt. Now Republicans have become blase about deficits and the debt, whereas many Democrats are apoplectic over President Bush's tax cuts and looming federal budget deficits. Congressional Democrats also wanted to use the surpluses of the late '90s to pare down the debt.
The explanation for these reversals is that Democrats have lost faith in Keynesian-type fiscal stimulus, and are instead worried about the effects of deficits and a growing debt on future spending programs. Republicans, on the other hand, appear to be favoring a fiscal stimulus, but they are mainly trying to limit future spending on entitlement and other programs favored by Democrats.
* * *
Our second point, that human as well as physical capital is key, derives from two pieces of evidence. Human capital -- the skills embodied in individuals -- accounts for about 70% of the total capital of the U.S., and a country's economic growth is closely tied to the human capital of its population. Countries that invest heavily in educating their citizens are also those that tend to experience high economic growth following such investments. For these reasons, it is important that tax policies encourage investment in human capital. Investment in human capital is responsive to take-home pay and therefore to tax rates, with the most direct effect coming from income tax.
A highly progressive income tax structure tends to discourage investment in human capital because it reduces take-home pay and the reward to highly skilled, highly paid occupations. Students work long and hard to enter occupations such as medicine and engineering that pay high salaries. The quality of labor in these occupations is lower in countries that cap the pay to professionals because reduced pay discourages individuals from investing in skills. Highly progressive tax structures decrease the gain to acquiring skills that have valuable social payoffs. The current push toward a flatter tax structure is welcome. A flatter structure will have beneficial effects, not only because of the immediate impetus to additional work, but because it will encourage investments in the skills that lead to higher standards of living over the longer run.
The evidence is clear: Cutting taxes will have beneficial effects. Tax cuts will keep government spending in check and will provide the incentives necessary to produce a highly skilled, productive work force that enables high economic growth and rising standards of living.
Mr. Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, and Mr. Murphy are economics professors at the University of Chicago. Mr. Lazear is an economics professor at Stanford. All three are fellows at the Hoover Institution.
Updated October 7, 2003 12:21 a.m.
I've mentioned this before, tax cuts are a necessary precursor to shrinking government spending. Time and time again government has demonstrated that it will spend all available revenue and then some. I would point out that Grahm-Rudman legislation was a key part of getting spending in line as well. Whatever happened to those laws? I'll predict that Arnold, as one of his first initiatives as Governor of California will lower taxes and make California taxes more regressive.