Advertisement In Today's NYT All Kansans and Right Wingers and Americans Should See

There is a terrific, important, even, paid advertisement in today's New York Times on page 2 of the Review section from the President of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten on Kansas and what Sam Brownback and his Republican Party did to it.

A free-market failure in the heartland 

Yes, we know Republicans in the Topeka statehouse finally, finally owned up to fiscal and economic reality recently and took back Governor Sam Brownback's and the Republican's 2012 tax cuts for the already-wealthy and corporations. But we need to learn from the nightmare experiment this turned out to be.

It was every supply-side economist’s dream: the promise of achieving economic nirvana by slashing taxes for the wealthy and corporations, and shrinking government. Except it became a nightmare for the people of Kansas, and now the Kansas Legislature has taken a big step toward waking up from it.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback turned his state into a laboratory for the most extreme form of trickle-down economics, promising that it would usher in an economic boom. It didn’t. It never has. Brownback’s five-year experiment caused state revenue to plummet, the deficit to explode, and painful spending cuts to be made—including cuts decimating public schools. Last week, a once-unlikely alliance stopped Brownback’s attempt to double down on his plan: Democratic and Republican lawmakers, urged on by parents, business people, civic activists and unions of working people.

And here's why it's so important to understand and remember what was attempted.

You would think that this revolt by Kansas’ citizens and legislators of both parties would send chills up supply-siders’ spines nationwide. But the essential tenets of Brownback’s plan remain at the center of the tax proposals (link is external) championed by President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan. Granted, these free-market tenets are well-established conservative orthodoxy. But, as the Kansas experiment demonstrates, they offer a false promise and lead not to prosperity but to deep austerity.

Not only is Kansas an excellent lesson on the hazards of "supply-side economics", but the opposite tactics in government has resulted in much different and far better conditions and in more than one state.

Another Midwest state has taken a different approach, one that invested in its future. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton raised taxes on upper-income individuals and businesses several years ago. Was the move kryptonite to the state’s economy, as Brownback and his fellow tax-cutters would have you believe? To the contrary. Minnesota has the fastest-growing economy in the Midwest, and the state is projecting a $1.65 billion surplus for the next two years. California and New York have chosen similar paths and are growing at twice the rate of Kansas.

So Kansans, Missourians, everyone, in fact, across the nation, for the love of God and all that is good, let's learn these very, very fresh lessons from Republican Governor Sam Brownback, his Republican, supply-side cohorts and the 

Let's not let this President Trump and Paul Ryan and their supply-siders try to pull this again, this time on the entire nation.

Links:

What happened after California raised taxes and Kansas cut them

Robert Reich (California versus Trumpland)

Kansas cut taxes, California raised them. What happened

How Kansas and California Debunked 

the GOP's Tax Cuts Argument