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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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It would probably be helpful to look at an actual chart of US tax receipts and a chart of US GDP around the time of the DJT tax cuts(Jan 1 2018) you can see that GDP continue to trend up and the tax receipts stayed stagnant.

What exactly are you seeing there? It looks rather like GDP kept on a similar trajectory from the end of the global financial crisis until Covid, whereas the tax revenue chart shows movement that basically cancels out from 2015 until 2018. It looks like tax revenues were stagnant until the Trump tax cuts, which started revenue growth that was, if short of the steep climbs during the back half of Bush 2 and post GFC under Obama, still pretty in line with the 90's.

Of course, that only gives us not quite 2 years until Covid throws everything out of wack.

It looks like tax revenues were stagnant until the Trump tax cuts

Tax receipts were stagnant until Q3 2020 nearly 3 years after the tax cuts and GDP growth was steady the whole time. If the tax cuts increased revenues I'd expect GDP to accelerate after the cuts and the tax revenue to track it. I think you're vastly underestimating what exactly it would take for the tax cuts to actually pay for themselves, it's an incredible claim. When you make a nonnegligible cut to taxes you need an immense about of increased total economic activity to happen to offset that. The effect would have to be tremendous. It would show up on the GDP chart and it doesn't.