High taxes don’t hurt growth, and the 1950s are proof.At least that’s the argument some people have been making lately. But does the...
High taxes don’t hurt growth, and the 1950s are proof.
At least that’s the argument some people have been making lately. But does the experience of the 1950s really reconcile high tax rates with strong growth?
Many scholars have looked into this question and concluded, after serious examination, that that the pro-tax argument does not hold water. Rather than summarize their points in this short blog, I encourage interested readers to check out some of the convincing analysis of this topic that has been published recently.
Joseph Thorndike, a Bush Fellow and respected tax historian, has authored a detailed study unpacking many of the common assumptions and misconceptions about the 1950s.
In a January 2013 column for Bloomberg, my Bush Center colleague Amity Shlaes writes that many people’s conceptions about 1950s tax history are fantasies.
Just this week, the Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed by Lawrence Mone titled “There’s No Going Back to the 1950s Tax System.”
And finally, the Manhattan Institute has just released a study by Arpit Gupta which concludes that “…it is potentially misleading to imagine that U.S. taxes in the 1950s can serve as a model for a better approach in 2013.”
