Do They Really Deserve a Tax Increase?

Ryan said that he'd let the Democrats propose tax-increases; he just focused on spending reductions and alterations in the Medicare/SocSec/Medicaid programs.

Perhaps Ryan's reason for not proposing a tax increase is better founded than "it's the Democrats' job to do that." More likely, Ryan knows that he can't trust the Republicans with any more money, either.

The survey says:

Using standard statistical analyses that introduce variables to control for business-cycle fluctuations, wars and inflation, we found that over the entire post World War II era through 2009 each dollar of new tax revenue was associated with $1.17 of new spending. Politicians spend the money as fast as it comes in—and a little bit more.

They re-ran the numbers with different variables in timing, different output measures--as wide a variety as they could.

The alternative models produce different estimates of the tax-spend relationship—between $1.05 and $1.81. But no matter how we configured the data and no matter what variables we examined, higher tax collections never resulted in less spending.

Many of you will not be surprised to learn this. Others of you will be firing up the torches and sharpening the pitchforks.

As for me and mine: BUY MORE AMMO!!

HT: Eyes