“Tax cuts!” makes for a great bumper sticker, but it’s hollow without serious contextualization.

The evidence of GDP increase and, following a lag time, of greater tax revenue subsequent to tax cuts is demonstrable.

No, it is not. The rise in GDP is illusionary, fueled by the Keynesian stimulus of deficit spending. The malinvestment of the debt issued to cover the deficits cripples the economy in the long term. Technically the malinvestment is not the fault of Reagnomics but a failure of Reagan/Bush public policy. An implementation error not a failure in the theory. But then again, according to some, so was the Soviet Union.

Reaganomics is not cutting taxes and spending, it is cutting taxes without cutting spending and running up huge deficits. Cutting taxes and spending so that there are no deficits but government was smaller might work, or not. It is based on the assumption that the ‘free market’ will make better decisions about capital spending than government bureaucrat would. Of course we now know that to be ridiculous. Not that the government is good, just that industry is just as bad.

Being stuck in gridlock for three hours a day, sipping lattes, watching American Idol – these are the ‘benefits’ of a society without moorings dependent on ever decreasing resources (oil, American consumer market share) and ever expanding competition for those resources.

You once wrote a book call ‘The End of History and The Last Man’ bout how people in modern, wealthy societies could lose their ‘elan’ to fight modern problems. You were right, except the problems are in people’s souls as much as in the world at large. Changing habits of consumption and adjusted ‘mark to market’ values of happiness and personal fulfillment should be considered as part of any long term solution.

Even when allowing for the Congressional Democrats willingness to play dead for those 6 years, how is the current debacle the sole fault of the Democrats?

Based on the proposals coming from the Obama Administration we’re supposed to believe the that people who layed the foundation for the current debacle will be the ones to lay groundwork for our future economic recovery.

This is what happens when you have a politics and an economy built on lies and snake-oil.

You must admit that at some point tax cuts don’t work anymore. If the government could levy no taxes then there would be no roads, regulation, infrastructure, military defense and the country’s economy would quickly collapse one way or the other.

This disproves your idea that cutting taxes always results in long-term growth. At some point, clearly, cutting taxes is no longer optimal.
Remember that Reagan lowered the tax rate to 42% and Clinton got it down to 39%. Bush lowered it to about 36% and the whole stack of cards fell apart…

I posit that Bush’s tax cuts finally crossed the line to a point where it was no longer optimal to lower taxes.