Reply #42: here's some supply side background

[UpInArms]

and the name was David Stockman

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/s/supply-side-economics.htm

In 1981 supply-side economist Robert Mundell, in 1999 to win the Nobel prize for "for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas", told Ronald Reagan that theory predicted that by cutting upper bracket taxation rates, and by lowering rates on capital gains, it would be possible to raise government revenues while cutting taxes. Subsequent budget years did not bear out this prediction, and between 1986 and 1994 a series of tax restructurings and tax increases were passed which raised the percentage of GDP taken as federal taxes to the same level that it had been in 1980. David Stockman, the self-proclaimed supply side Budget Director under Reagan later admitted that the "Rosy Scenario" which he used to justify the predictions was "cooked" and "So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

Critics of supply side economics, cited this as proof that the theory had failed, and that the lack of academic credentials by movement leaders such as Jude Wanniski and Robert Bartley show that the theories were bankrupt. Mundell in his Nobel prize lecture countered that the success of price stabilty was proof that the supply-side revolution had worked. The continuing debate over supply-side policies tends to focus on the massive federal and current account deficits that have accumulated in the US since 1980.