Riedl’s Myth 7

Continuing the look at Brian Riedl’s ten myths

For those keeping score at home, here at Angry Bear we’ve already posted in detail on Myths 1 through 6…
PGL’s post on Riedl Myth 1
My post on Riedl Myth 1.
Alkali19’s post on Myths 2 and 4
My post on Riedl Myth 3
My post on Riedl Myth 5
My post on Riedl Myth 6

Also, reader NS has given us an overview of the Riedl approach.

Here’s Myth 7: “Myth #7: Reversing the upper-income tax cuts would raise substantial revenues.
Fact: The low-income tax cuts reduced revenues the most.”

To be honest, I think Riedl slipped up here, since I’m not sure the fact he brings up has anything to do with the myth. As per MaxSpeak, both the myth and the fact can be true simultaneously.

But let me change the story a bit. Let’s say we were discussing not tax revenues but rather spending. Now, there are any number of inane things in the budget that everyone except a handful of recipients of the cash would agree are wasteful. All of us, left and right could agree with that, and we could probably come up with a long list that just about every reader of this blog and just about every member of Heritage could agree upon.

Now, if someone tried to defend one of those items by stating – well, these other items on the list are even more costly, nobody would consider that to be much of a defense. Defending the proposition that upper-income tax cuts are a good thing is one thing, but saying its not a problem because other tax cuts caused even bigger reductions in income, whether true or not, is a non-sequitor.