Re: Taxes
Oh wait, I missed the fact that you were changing the subject, too. The issue was whether supply-side theory works in the real world. The evidence says it doesn't. So can we stop pretending that cutting taxes will increase tax revenue, or substantially increase economic activity?
And what the hell, while I'm at it lets look at your other point:
Aside from the immediate .5% drop in GDP growth was the fact that international passenger commerce (think tourism) took 8 years to recover.
You work (worked?) in the airline industry, right? So of course you're very aware of it. But your industry is not the economy. "Travel and entertainment stocks fell, while communications, pharmaceutical and military/defense stocks rose." (Quote is from Wikipedia, but it matches my recollection.)
According to the USC-based Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (quoted here -- http://www.nbclosang...-Short-Lived.html):
[T]he impact of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., on the economy ranged from $35 billion to $109 billion for gross domestic product, or between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of the GDP.
You said it was a drop in GDP growth. Are you saying something different from what that study concluded? If so, on what basis?
Because if it was a 0.5 percent drop, then you can factor that into a single year of the period from 2001-2009, when real GDP grew by an annual average of 1.56 percent. So that means a half-percent spread across 8 years, or 0.0625 percent per year, bringing the average up to 1.6 percent. Wow, yeah, that was a huge effect.
