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Democracy & Technology Blog Rubinomics, RIP (maybe…we hope…please?)

Bret Swanson
January 27, 2006
Taxation

Don Luskin has the goods on the terrific 2003 capital gains tax cut and the increased government revenues it yielded.
Bottom line: The Congressional Budget Office predicted the 2003 capital gains tax rate cut from 20% to 15% would reduce capital gains revenues by $26 billion when in fact those revenues have increased by $27 billion over the baseline projection, for a total CBO botch of $53 billion.
Wasn’t it just earlier this week that former Treasury Secretary and current Citigroup director Robert Rubin was giving us another lecture how in order to become more competitive and prepare for a future of intense globalization the U.S. needs to raise tax rates? Sorry, Bob, the new numbers, as have all the old numbers, disprove your weird high-tax, root-canal, negative-sum theories.
-Bret Swanson

Bret Swanson

Bret Swanson is a Senior Fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, where he researches technology and economics and contributes to the Disco-Tech blog. He is currently writing a book on the abundance of the world economy, focusing on the Chinese boom and developing a new concept linking economics and information theory. Swanson writes frequently for the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal on topics ranging from broadband communications to monetary policy.