CUTTING TAXES ON THE WEALTHY

“You might think that Republican thought leaders would be engaged in some soul-searching about their party’s obsession with cutting taxes on the wealthy. Why do candidates who inveigh against the evils of budget deficits and federal debt feel obliged to propose huge high-end tax cuts — much bigger than those of George W. Bush — that would eliminate trillions in revenue?

“And economics aside, why such a commitment to a policy that has never had much support even from the party’s own base, and appears even more politically suspect in the face of a populist uprising?

“But here’s what Mr. [Paul] Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives] said about all those tax cuts for the top 1 percent: ‘I do not like the idea of buying into these distributional tables. What you’re talking about is what we call static distribution. It’s a ridiculous notion.’”

Krugman, Paul, ‘On Invincible Ignorance,’ Op-Ed column in The New York Times, March 21, 2016. [Paul Krugman is a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics.]