JFK was a social liberal and international anti-communist. JFK couldn't get the bill through, and LBJ did, but the basic notion of cutting to top rate to 70% is hardly that of what today's gop favors. So, attempts to paint him as a "conservative" are laughable, and I don't think the conservatives want to claim LBJ as one of their own. And, to get the bill passed, LBJ had to promise to keep spending under a level. He lied, but he promised. Reagan promised more spending too. So, "supply side" and "Laugher curve" became ideological terms themselves to hide what was going to be a deficit explosion. "Deficits don't matter, Reagan taught us that."
But, I'm not going to pretend to know what the financial situation was in the 1960s beyond growth stagnated under Ike, and there was real concern that the Russian economy was growing much faster than ours, but as it turned out the CIA was grossly incompetent in analyzing the Russian economy and the % of their gnp they spent on defense.
But, was there an excess in capital that required more demand to consume production? Or, as in the 1970s, had demand been crushed by a decade of inflation followed by Fed induced recession? Once inflation was killed, the Fed reduced rates, and increased demand came from improved consumer conditions, and increased capital resulted in more consumer choices. And Reagan's tax plan was enacted the same day IBM marketed the first PC. It's good to be lucky.
If there's a comparison, I'd say it was Thatcher/Reagan had a basic belief that growth would be better with private actors allocating capital to risk.
Yes, JFK promoted his tax cut as a way to spur growth. But this eerily sounds that Reagan:
In meeting the demands of war finance, the individual income tax moved from a selective tax imposed on the wealthy to the means by which the great majority of our citizens participates in paying for well over one-half of our total budget receipts. It is supplemented by the corporation income tax, which provides for another quarter of the total.
This emphasis on income taxation has been a sound development. But so many taxpayers have become so preoccupied with so many tax-saving devices that business decisions are interfered with, and the efficient functioning of the price system is distorted.
Moreover, special provisions have developed into an increasing source of preferential treatment to various groups. Whenever one taxpayer is permitted to pay less, someone else must be asked to pay more. The uniform distribution of the tax burden is thereby disturbed and higher rates are made necessary by the narrowing of the tax base. Of course, some departures from uniformity are needed to promote desirable social or economic objectives of overriding importance which can be achieved most effectively through the tax mechanism. But many of the preferences which have developed do not meet such a test and need to be reevaluated in our tax reform program.
It will be a major aim of our tax reform program to reverse this process, by broadening the tax base and reconsidering the rate structure. The result should be a tax system that is more equitable, more efficient and more conducive to economic growth.
President Kennedy Appeals to the Congress for a Tax Cut - 1961
Yet, there's also this which sounds like Obama:
Changing economic conditions at home and abroad, the desire to achieve greater equity in taxation, and the strains which have developed in our balance of payments position in the last few years, compel us to examine critically certain features of our tax system which, in conjunction with the tax system of other countries, consistently favor United States private investment abroad compared with investment in our own economy. 1. Elimination of tax deferral privileges in developed countries and "tax haven" deferral privileges in all countries. Profits earned abroad by American firms operating through foreign subsidiaries are, under present tax laws, subject to United States tax only when they are returned to the parent company in the form of dividends. In some cases, this tax deferral has made possible indefinite postponement of the United States tax; and, in those countries where income taxes are lower than in the United States, the ability to defer the payment of U.S. tax by retaining income in the subsidiary [p.295] companies provides a tax advantage for companies operating through overseas subsidiaries that is not available to companies operating solely in the United States.
So, I'm hard put to answer your question beyond what Glasner said in the conclusion of link I posted earlier, "econ policy has consequences, both good and bad."
Obviously in 1961, JFK had no notion of monetarism because Greenspan was just publishing his magnum opus. He could not have known that the real cause of the great depression was the central bank reducing the monetary supply while deflation occurred, and the genius of FDR was to kill the gold standard and increase money. (Of course that may have been more a byproduct of Keynes than actual policy. It's good to be lucky. Too bad he wasn't as lucky as Reagan in getting shot) Did JFK even consider supply? I suspect he had a Keynesian notion that supply would always rise and fall to fill demand. So, there I agree with you that JFK's tax cut was not a supply side cut.
But I don't think it really matters. When ideologues say "supply side," they mean cut taxes on the rich cause they pay too much. It has nothing to do with economics. And, given how the top 1%'s incomes are rising faster than their share of income taxes are rising, I'm not crying for them. My concern is more about how can incomes of workers be increased without some kind of "just tax the rich to even out income inequality."
