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When The New Republic's website first posted three days ago the attack on supply-side economics by Jonathan Chait (who is not a trained economist), it was titled "Flight of the Wingnuts," with the tagline "How a Cult Hijacked American Politics." At some point since then is has been retitled to make this masterpiece of nasty innuendo even nastier. Now it's called "Feast of the Wingnuts," with the tagline "How Economic Crackpots Devoured American Politics." As wingnuts, in reality, neither fly nor feast, I can only cringe as I try to imagine with what strange metaphor this filthy article will be titled three days hence.

As the title leads one to expect, it is full of name-calling. Chait (who is not a trained economist) calls those who advocate supply-side economics "extremists," "greedy," "possibly insane," and much more We are reminded by Chait (who is not a trained economist) that two of supply-side economics' leading lights, Jude Wanniski and George Gilder, are not trained economists. We are reminded that George H. W. Bush (who is not a trained economist), a conservative whose opinion liberal Chait (who is not a trained economist) would never trust, except in this one instance in which Bush's opinion counts because it agrees with that of Chait (who is not a trained economist), once called supply-side economics "voodoo economics." Chait (who is not a trained economist) chooses not to remind us that Robert E. Lucas, Jr. (who is a Nobel Prize-winning economist) once wrote that "The supply-side economists...have delivered the largest genuinely free lunch I have seen in 25 years in this business, and I believe we would have a better society if we followed their advice." Chait (who is not a trained economist, and who wrote about unrelated topics before he wrote about supply-side economics) reminds us that Gilder once wrote about unrelated topics before he wrote about supply-side economics, and became rather vane during the tech bubble of 1999-2000 (though that has nothing to do with supply-side economics). We are reminded that Wanniski once supported Louis Farrakhan (though that has nothing to do with supply-side economics). Chait (who is not a trained economist) fails to mention to the liberal audience for which his article is intended that Wanniski bitterly opposed the US invasion of Iraq (though that has nothing to do with supply-side economics, it would count in his favor).

Chait (who is not a trained economist) acknowledges that the Laffer Curve is "correct in theory." But he faults Dick Cheney for not pointing out in 1974, when the Curve was shown to him, that "there was no evidence that the U.S. income tax was on the downward slope of the curve--that is, that rates were then high enough that tax cuts would produce higher revenue." Yet a few paragraphs later, Chait (who is not a trained economist) states that "there have been periods in American history when, nearly any contemporary economist would agree, top tax rates were too high, such as the several decades after World War II." If Chait (who is not a trained economist) were a trained economist, he would realize that the "several decades after World War II" takes one up to 1974, the year in which he says ""there was no evidence" that tax rates were too high.

Thanks to several readers who sent links to this. I'll be writing more on it later.

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