...The question is whether rate cuts have raised revenue. Please tell me if you can imagine sometime somewhere that revenue increased after tax rates were lowered from an excessively extreme burden...The request was to imagine --as with a mere hypothetical case. Please suppose a king on an island that demanded the fruits of everyone's labors, and then think what would logically follow.You would be really hard pressed to find a situation where it ever happened in real life...
In 'real life' it's actually it's an age old dilemma. Louis XVII (iirc) said taxation was the art of plucking the goose for the most down and least squawk. That gang eventually lost their heads over tax'n'spending (as it were...) and after the chaos of zero taxes Napoleon rose to have access to far greater funding than the royalists ever saw. The USSR had a 100% rate that failed and was replaced by a regime that was able to cover the gov't payroll by dropping the 100% rate....Please describe what possible observation would there be that we could make together that would convince you that this has ever happened in real life...Please help me follow your thoughts here and say what do you mean by 'real revenue'. If we're talking about total federal revenue changes over time adjusted for inflation, please show how current revenues are less than they were say, three decades ago in real $....There is only one standard, and it's totally objective: increases in real revenues. You'll notice that it's never happened...
Real, as opposed to nominal, so yes, I'm talking about federal revenue adjusted for inflation. Federal revenues today are higher than they were 30 years ago, but that doesn't help your argument because the economy is also larger.