They can see it, but they consider hypocrisy and corruption as just par for the course when it comes to government. Its the reason they are anti-government and want to "starve the beast". The democrats running people like hillary do nothing to dissuade them from this notion.

They also will put up with a lot to keep their white chrisitan pro-gun anti-abortion culture in control. But this is becoming less of an issue.

The democrats have a huge opportunity here to make their party inclusive of all the lower and middle class, abandon anti-gun and identity politics, and run candidates who are trustworthy. But the old guard democrats are still have a huge amount of power.

I’m not sure you can attribute that to some ‘old guard’ establishment wing of the party when perhaps the loudest proponents of the identity politics is the newer wave of Bernie supporters and coastal SJWs. Establishment democrats tend to be more flexible on the identity politics issues, but very conservative about preserving the old New Deal regime and resorting to industrial era pro-labor policies. There’s a strain of pragmatic centrists like Obama, but they tend to be not so great on civil liberties and hawkish on foreign policy.

I don’t see the Dem coalition being able to assemble a ‘best of’ from among its various competing visions that doesn’t get impeded by those differences.

To be fair, most Republicans think the tax bill will generate economic growth and revenue not captured by relatively static budget models. But there's no excuse on spending...there's actually little difference between GWB and Obama on spending outcomes.

They should ask Kansas how that worked out.

https://www.npr.org/2017/12/13/570387479/kansas-2012-tax-cut...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/us/politics/kansas-tried-...

Planet Money actually interviewed Arthur Laffer of the Laffer Curve in their episode about Kansas' experiment with lowering taxes:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/01/11/509378842/epis...

Tax cuts may have not generated more revenue in Kansas, but there is definitely something to the theory that lowering taxes can generate more revenue. As the Laffer Curve predicts, maximum government revenue exists at a tax rate above 0% (no taxes) and below 100% (no reason to work). Determining that maximizing rate is the trick. If your tax rate is below the maximizing rate, then raising taxes would generate more revenue. But if your tax rate is above the maximizing rate, then lowering taxes would actually generate more revenue for the government.

If memory serves, that maximizing rate was somewhere around 50% under Laffer's initial model, which is why the first Reagan tax cut reduced the top income bracket from 70% to 50%.

Now we're at 37%, and I guarantee you that's still considered too high by the Ryan types.

"but there is definitely something to the theory that lowering taxes can generate more revenue"

There isn't. There is something to the theory that changing(!!) tax rates can generate more revenue. I haven't seen any evidence that we are on the side of the maximizing rate where lowering taxes is necessary.

Yes, but is there any evidence to suggest we are moving the right way by lowering taxes?

There is no single tax rate in the US. There are at least three different granularities of jurisdiction (federal, state, local) and many different types of taxation schemes (income taxes, property taxes, transaction/sales taxes, fees, etc) most of which have exclusions, deductions, etc. and all of which distort the effects of taxation.

The Laffer Curve doesn't account for the massive complexity of taxes in the USA nor does it account for the game theory of moving revenues and/or profits to different jurisdictions or transactions moving into the black market.

I don't think there is anything to the theory. The Laffer Curve works great in theory, in practice it never does. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2012/06/lau...

"Not aware of any evidence in recent history where tax cuts actually raise revenue. Sorry, Laffer."