Another One Bites the Dust?

Just days after Joe Biden shot himself in the foot with a backhanded compliment for Barack Obama, John Edwards sticks his foot in his mouth by announcing that he’d raise taxes to pay for his health care program.

Buh-BYE John!

Supply-Side economics is built on the foundation that higher tax rates = lower tax revenues and lower tax rates (down to about 20% on the income tax rate) = higher tax revenues.

So either Edwards believes that America will need less in tax revenues going forward, even with some form of “Universal Health Care program,” or he believes that despite the incredible and unprecedented success that Supply-Side policies have delivered over the past quarter century, that the Supply-Siders have been wrong.

If the latter is the case, then how come neither John Edwards nor anyone else can make that case?

The facts are that (1) higher tax rates always result in lower tax revenues because the people those increases target, primarily higher income earners, can and do respond to that incentive, to defer more of their current income tax deferred, and (2) every form of nationalized or Universal health care relies on health care rationing.

So, the case against Edwards, take your pick:

John Edwards is going to raise your taxes!!!

OR,

John Edwards wants to reduce government revenues!!!