Patrick Henry on the Supply-Siders

Thanks to Ryan McMaken’s excellent article on Patrick Henry for this quote:

“You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and prosperous people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the end of your government.”

Reading this, I thought Henry was talking about the supply-siders. Liberty is far from the concerns of the supply-siders, instead their goal is for the government to manage the economy so as to promote economic growth (and the interests of their large corporate supporters). By using the proper “incentives” the supply-siders hope to save the welfare-warfare state from an economic collapse since, unlike conventional leftists, the supply-siders realize that the slaves will work harder if their chains are loosened a bit.

Of course, all the supply-siders do is delay the welfare-warfare state’s inevitable day of reckoning, while causing the public to associate tax cuts with big government, special interest politics and crackpot economics.
Supply-siders denounce tax cuts on workers and families as “social engineering through the tax code,” but what are the supply-side claims that an X percentage cut in taxes will lead to a Y amount of job growth but an attempt at central planing through the tax code?

During the debate on the Bush tax cut supply-siders where pushing studies claiming to break down by Congressional district the jobs that the Bush tax cut would produce. It would have been nice if they could have identified the recipients of these jobs so Congressmen could have done a franked mailing informing the lucky recipients of the good news!

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11:25 pm on December 8, 2003