Who Really Raises Taxes? Democrats or Republicans?

A rude comment on my last post led me to investigate the question. Who raises taxes more, Democrats or Republicans?

One article in the New York Times studied the rate of tax increases in 40 states between 1985 and 1987. The states with Republican governors raised taxes by a larger percentage, 3.5 percent to the Democrats 1.6 percent (and that's not counting a 248 percent increase by a Republican governor in New Mexico).

Another interesting thing I found was a table that showed how Democratic and Republican presidents fared in 20 different measures of the economy including unemployment, inflation, and real disposable income. Again, the Democrats won in every single category.

It all boils down to Republicans favoring supply-side tax cuts, or favoring big business which in turn increases supply, and Democrats favoring demand-side tax cuts, or giving more money to consumers which in turn increases demand.

Let's not forget that it was Republican President Herbert Hoover who got us into The Great Depression with his hands-off approach to regulating the economy, a hallmark of Republican administration. But it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who created all the public works programs and regulation, like the SEC, that started to pull us out of the Depression.

The whole incident sounds eerily familiar today. Unfettered greed and an unregulated economy under a Republican administration leads to an economic downturn only to be revived by demand-side economic policy under a Democratic administration.