Cropped BHI

In Point of Fact

from NewsLink, Vol. 1, No. 4, Summer 1997

The message is: Worry about Vancouver not Hong Kong...
"For the most part, the Hong Kong entrepreneurs have gone back. They don't want to pay 50 percent taxes. They don't like the bureaucracy here."
Developer James Speakman quoted in "For Vancouver the Party is Over: Hong Kong Money Is No Longer Acting as a Stimulus," Tasmin Carlisle, Wall Street Journal, July 23, 1997.

...And why not ? Look at who was a supply sider...
"It is somewhat ironic that Communist China...provides the best evidence of the benefits of a supply-side approach. It's not easy to cut huge chunks out of taxes as Chairman Deng Xiaping did in China. But the results speak for themselves. For the first time in China's history, millions of people have joined the ranks of the middle class and the prospects are bright for hundreds of millions more. The lessons are obvious... It may be worth remembering that all levels of U.S. government - federal, state, and local - only taxed away 10 percent of GDP in 1929; today the figure is around 34 percent. Maybe it's time for more Americans to read the works of Chairman Deng."
"The Great Tax Cut of China," Alvin Rabushka, Wall Street Journal, August 7, 1997.

The new cyber-optimism - 25 years of prosperity....
"We are watching the beginnings of a global economic boom on a scale never experienced before. We have entered a period of growth that could eventually double the world's economy every dozen years and bring increasing prosperity for - quite literally - billions of people on the planet. We are riding the early waves of a 25-year-run of a greatly expanding economy that will do much to solve seemingly intractable problems like poverty and to ease tensions through the world."
"The Long Boom," Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden, Wired, July 1997.

For Dick Gephardt, it's real easy....
"Denunciation of the skewed benefits of tax cuts (toward the rich) is one of Washington's easiest press releases." "The Search for Fairness: Tax equity is impossible in the current system," Thomas G. Donlan, Barron's, July 21, 1997.


NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2003. All rights reserved.

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