And the last time it came around, Jonathan Chait was angry:
Lying Chart Of The Day, Classic Edition: Ubiquitous libertarian anti-tax pundit Veronique de Rugy pulls out the old hackneyed Republican line that tax revenues can't go above 19 percent.... I've seen versions of this dating back two decades. Part of the scam is a simply visual trick familiar to anybody who read "How To Lie With Statistics" -- you scale the chart to make a major change appear tiny. De Rugy's chart, one which the scale of federal tax revenue goes from an absurd o to 100, seems to show little change, thus proving the supply-side claim that increasing marginal tax rates is self-defeating... [things look different] within a reasonable scale.... [T]he first Reagan tax cuts in 1981 caused revenue to plummet.... [T]he tax hikes by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- which supply-siders claimed would not increase revenue -- were followed by a massive spike in revenue. And then the tax cuts by George W. Bush -- which supply-siders claimed would not reduced revenue by very much -- were followed by a massive, 5% of GDP drop in revenue...
"
Comments