Because apparently it needs to be said.

[Bucky]

43. No one gets a job from a poor person... unless they work retail.

I can tell you as an economics teacher, there is a dollop of Truth in the big fat Crock-Pot of Lies that makes up supply side economics.

Friedmanesque economics does have a particular macroeconomic impact when applied to money supply and how it affects inflation and sustainable growth rates. But when it comes to aggregate microeconomics, which means day to day living for regular families, it's Keynesian economics, aggregate demand, and its impact on real life opportunities that runs the show.

I say this because there is a high tax point at which the Laffer curve is legitimate, that increasing tax rates will reduce smaller government tax revenues. But it's somewhere around the 40 to 50% effective tax rate (not the nominal rates), which we haven't seen since the Kennedy administration.

Increasing the top marginal rate right now would dramatically lower the deficit and potentially put us on track to balanced budgets again. Sadly, that would also eventually affect the reliable income streams to the institutions lending money to the federal government. The high finance organizations that help Congress get reelected don't necessarily have an interest in seeing balanced budgets.