Here is the original article from the same guy:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/taxes-and-revenues-another-history-lesson/
Taxes and revenues — another history lesson
One thing I’m hearing a lot lately is the old line that tax cuts actually increase revenues, sometimes accompanied by a few out-of-context numbers. So a bit more history plus chart on all that.
The important thing to realize, when looking at the history of federal revenues, is that they tend to grow over time even if there is no change in policy. One reason is inflation; another is growing population; a third is long-run economic growth.
It’s easy to correct for the first two; a bit harder to correct for growth, since part of what’s at issue is whether tax cuts do wonderful things for growth. So the chart below shows real federal revenue per capita — specifically, revenue in thousands of 2000 dollars per person — since 1993. All data from BEA.
What you see is that there was a huge revenue increase during the Clinton years. There was also the much-touted revenue surge of the later Bush years, but this followed a spectacular revenue plunge earlier. At this point real revenue per capita is only slightly higher than it was at the end of the 1990s. That’s actually abnormal: given the long-term growth of the US economy, we should have expected a continuing upward trend in revenues per capita.
Overall, the graph suggests that yes, Virginia, cutting taxes reduces revenue. But it also tells us that stuff happens: the stock bubble inflated revenues in the late 90s, the collapse of that bubble hit revenues thereafter, then the housing bubble did its thing, and so on.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
