Shooting Kansas Governor Brownback's tax cuts all to heck

By sheer coincidence,I ran into two articles yesterday that, as the title above suggests, shoot Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's plans and ideas of getting a lot of business and employment and tax revenue for the state by slashing the tax rates of corporations and the wealthy:

Here's the first, from CNBC:

Taxes Don’t Drive Out the California Rich: Study

As Californians debate the "rich tax" contained in Gov. Jerry Brown’s Prop 30, a new report challenges one argument for lowering tax rates on the wealthy: that millionaires simply move to avoid higher taxes, leaving the middle class with a higher burden.

The study, by sociologists at Stanford and Princeton, looked at two tax changes in California, a 1996 tax cut on high-income filers and a 2005 levy called the Mental Health Services Tax that took one percent of income over $1 million. Using tax-return data, the researchers examined how the changes affected “millionaire migration” in or out of the state before and after the tax laws were passed.

The research showed that millionaires not only were unmoved, so to speak, by their taxes being raised, “the highest-income Californians were less likely to leave the state after the millionaire tax was passed,” wrote Charles Varner and Cristobal Young in their report.

In fact, the richer the Californian, the more likely he or she was to stay, the study found. Nor did the data suggest that lowering taxes lured millionaires to the state. (Read more: Millionaire 'Munger Sandwich' Squeezes Gov. Brown)

And sure, okay, I'll grant you, Kansas is not California, not by a long shot. It doesn't have an ocean and beaches nor mountains but it also doesn't have as many wealthy and uber-wealthy people, either, so it could be a wash.

But to go on and support this idea and theory, here's the 2nd article I referred to above:

Nonpartisan congressional study: Tax breaks for rich don't grow jobs
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A congressional research service is challenging the candidates who say that preserving Bush-era tax breaks for the rich are a way to increase jobs.

In fact, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service not only found no evidence that six decades of relief for the wealthy helped the nation's economy, they also warned that this may have expanded the gap between the rich and the poor.

"The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth," researchers wrote in their latest report to Congress.

Top federal income tax rates have changed considerably since World War II ended in 1945.

Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, the top marginal rate typically was above 90 percent, the report states. It now stands at 35 percent.

The top rate on capital gains was 25 percent in the 1950s and 1960s, reached 35 percent in the 1970s, and stands today at 35 percent.

Meanwhile, the growth rate in real gross domestic product -- the value of all goods and services produced, adjusted for inflation -- averaged 4.2 percent in the 1950s but just 1.7 percent in the 2000s.

"The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie," the report states, " ... but there may be a relationship to how the economic pie is sliced."

The nonpartisan service found the share of income accruing to the top 0.1 percent of American families rose from 4.2 percent in 1945 to a peak of 12.3 percent in 2007. And though it fell during the last recession, it remains more than double the post-war level at 9.2 percent.

Income tax rates have been at the center of policy debates in numerous races this fall.

Both the above articles have links here, below--the first two. The rest are additional sources, proving these points.

Could we please, now, dissuade ourselves of this silly idea that giving the wealthy yet more, in the form of tax cuts and subsidies and rebates, somehow makes the nation and the rest of us stronger and/or more wealthy?

Links: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49623297

http://www.ctmirror.org/story/17498/nonpartisan-congressional-study-tax-breaks-rich-dont-grow-jobs


http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/tax-cuts-wealthiest-don-t-stimulate-economy-report-160714639.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/tax-cuts-wealthiest-don-t-stimulate-economy-report-160714639.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/tax-cuts-wealthiest-don-t-stimulate-economy-report-160714639.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9

http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/Congressional-Report-Tax-Cuts-for-the-Rich-Do-Not-Promote-Growth-63992-1.html