perfidy

That tax cuts cause the economy to grow is not tired conservative rhetoric. The economy, over the last fifty years, has boomed after every significant tax cut - after WWII, after Kennedy's tax cuts in the early sixties, after Reagan's twenty years later, and after the capital gains reduction in the mid nineties. The economy in the seventies was in the shitter in every respect. Reagan not only reduced the taxes, but swept away the price controls, wage controls, and excessive regulation of business. The economy took off. With the exception of defense spending, Reagan attempted to reduce or at least stabilize government spending - it was the congress that ran the huge deficits. 

The capital gains tax cut directly affected the amount of money available for investment, and for raising capital. One of the reasons that the tech boom happened was the huge influx in venture capital made possible by the capital gains tax cut.

When you think about it, how does the economy grow? It is not through government action. The economy grows when people develop new businesses, new technologies, new methods. They develop these things with the help of investor money. That money is available because people save and earn. When taxes rise, money is pulled out of the economy, and is unavailable for capital development, and is unavailable for the people who would purchase the new products or services. Thus, higher taxes serve as a break on the economy. 

Granted, money that we give to the government can be useful - roads, defense, courts, etc. But it is more useful when it stays in our hands, collectively. One irony of the situation is that when you lower taxes, revenue rises. The Laffer curve has been proven, most recently with the capital gains cut of the nineties, but also generally over the last century. When taxes go down, the economy grows, and even though the gubmint is getting a smaller piece of pie, the pie as a whole is much larger. Capital gains were cut by I think 33%, and over two years revenue from the lower tax rate increased by 50% or so. (I can't remember the exact numbers.) 

While the deficits that were run in the eighties were enormous and frightening, they are gone. That was not an intergenerational burden of any kind - but only because the economy was able to grow. 

Ross points out that drug programs and military budgets are intergenerational warfare - which is the point I made in my first post. Tax cutting is the only way that we can restrain spending. People freak over high deficits much more than over high taxes. (Strange, if you ask me.) If we were to freeze spending, then the government would have a decreasing share of the economy over time. And tax cuts are necessary every so often if for no other reason than inflation - as people creep into higher tax brackets, the taxes are being raised, if stealthily. (Of course, a flat tax would solve that problem.) 

Of course, there are other factors affecting the economy. There are various business cycles. The education of the populace, the world economy, money supply, labor laws, productivity, cultural attitudes to work, the general legal structure for commerce, patent law, etc. But these things remain relatively constant. Other variable factors can have a big impact as well. Oil price spikes can have effects similar to a tax hike - increasing everyone's cost of doing business, but that is out of politician's control. The Justice Department prosecution of Bill Gates was the proximate cause of the recent tech crash. When Bill Gates lost thirty billion dollars, the rest of the economy reacted to the sudden disappearance of all that money. Tax levels and Fed control of the money supply are two of the biggest levers in the economy - and the ones that our elected officials control. When these levers are set in a pro-economy position, things are good, the government is out of the way of our collective business. 

Tax cuts are good for the economy. They are good, because they keep money out of the hands of politicians, and restrain the growth of government. (PJ O'Rourke said that giving money to government was like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenager.) They are good, because it is right that people keep the money that they earn, and not deliver half of it over to thumb fingered nozzleheads in DC. Links in a minute.