Letters to the Editor
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NOT True!
Almost no reputable economists support the discredited supply-side "Laffer curve" hypothesis that tax cuts result in increased revenue[.]
This simply is not true. Many (most? almost all? No research here!) reputable economists support the Laffer hypothesis at some tax rate. It is true that no one with an intact reputation believes the Laffer hypothesis to be true at current U.S. tax rates.
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Talk to the French
Their recent runup in marginal tax rates at the high end has created a new and large tax expat community in Switzerland. So instead of creating additional revenue, it's created less.
See also the British tax expat invasion to the US in the middle 1960's when the UK's top marginal rate was 98%.
And let me tell you, that if they don't fix the AMT, I will leave the US. And I'm middle class. There's just no reason to be sucked dry for no return.
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re:Leaving the Country
ER: Are you planning on never coming back? Because the IRS does not consider leaving the country a valid basis for a US citizen to not pay taxes.
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the beast won't starve itself
A few things...
First, to be fair to the Republicans, the "starve the beast" theory can be viewed in terms of what portion of national production is consumed/controlled by the state. In that sense, it is compatible with the Laffer curve strategy because it proposes that revenues will increase due to a much larger increase in national production.
Second, starve the beast is a stupid strategy, as has been outlined at the Libertarian Wiki. Here's the gist of it:
The theory has been criticized on the grounds that it is not consistant with the actual behavior of the government, that it is internally inconsistant, politically cowardly, and politically incomplete.
(Libertarian wiki content is in the Public Domain.)
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George Bernard Shaw ...
... once remarked that all the economists in the world laid end-to-end would not be sufficient to reach a conclusion.
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No you have that backwards
When an American citizen gives up their citizenship one of the first things to happen is that the IRS takes you to tax court under the assumption that no one would ever leave America unless it was to skip out on taxes. Mostly it's a roadblock to make the task harder and more time consuming but there's not an awful lot they can do, ultimately other than being a bother and wasting a great deal of time. There are at least a dozen countries that have fairly lax laws of ingathering so there's a large number of Americans who qualify for near-instant citizenship in other countries. At that point, one can give up their American citizenship and passport.
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No support for Laffer curve...huh?!?!
Wow, to add to Zaleriana's post, Mr. Leonard's comment about no econmist support is terribly bogus, indicative of poor scholarship by him, and demonstrates an abysmal understanding of the Laffer curve. The Laffer curve is really a mathematical assertion that there is an IDEAL tax rate. Easier to express with a diagram, it demonstrates that at a 0% tax rate, the goverment would take in no revenue. And at the other end of the tax spectrum, if the government taxed at a 100% rate, it would obtain NO revenue because no rational person would work if ALL their earnings were given to the government.
So somewhere between 0% and 100%, you have an ideal tax rate.