'We are a cautionary tale': Kansas feels the pain of massive Trump-style tax cuts
Source: The Guardian
'We are a cautionary tale': Kansas feels the pain of massive Trump-style tax cuts
In 2012, Kansas did what Donald Trump wants to do: it introduced
huge tax cuts to try to boost growth. Today, the state is out of money
– and locals are angry
Dominic Rushe in Kansas
Monday 15 May 2017 07.00 BST
Kansas is broke – but you wouldn’t guess it looking at its shining state capitol in Topeka. The imposing limestone monument, crowned by a shiny copper dome and limned with John Steuart Curry’s luminous murals, has just undergone a $325m facelift. What’s happening inside the state house is a lot less pretty, and may well foreshadow the far uglier battle looming over the future of taxation in the United States
Last month, Donald Trump’s two key economic allies, treasury secretary Stephen Mnuchin and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, unveiled the outline of Donald Trump’s much-trailed tax plan. The biggest tax cuts “in history” would slash taxes for business, simplify taxes for everyone else, and “pay for themselves” by stimulating economic growth, Trump’s fiscal duo claimed.
The plan’s similarity to the one that has left Kansas in crisis is “unbelievable”, according to Duane Goossen, the former Kansas secretary of administration.
The economic spirit behind Trump’s plan is Arthur Laffer – the go-to guru of “supply-side economics” since the Reagan era, and one of the architects of Kansas governor Sam Brownback’s original tax plan.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/15/kansas-trump-style-tax-cuts-economic-disaster
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