The scientists who worked for the cigarette companies couldn't find a link to cancer. Economists who work in academia can't find working economic policies for the same reason. Private sector economists on the other hand...actually place bets and get rewarded or punished for being wrong. Not shockingly, they have very different opinions from the academic economists.

PS And you wonder why Mississippi is richer than the UK.

PPS The Laffer curve is real, has a mountain of evidence and disproves this paper.

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HaloZero 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I thought the scientist who worked for cigarettes companies did find a bunch of links but the companies squashed the results. It’s pretty famously known that they knew cigarettes were bad for you decades ago.

	▲	alistairSH 10 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes, tobacco companies knew the health risks at least back tot he 70s, if not the 50s or 60s. And in the late 70s, they launched Operation Berkshire as a bulwark against negative press and government regulation. They have literally been found guilty of conspiring to suppress the health risks.
	▲	9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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notahacker 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we're really doing these comparisons, the think tanks that wrote policy pieces for the cigarette companies talking about the evils of regulating tobacco were also particularly passionate about tax cuts for the wealthy benefiting everyone...

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convolvatron 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

every single time taxes for the wealthy were cut, it was argued that the laffler curve would make up for the loss in federal tax receipts, thus leaving us with the same level of services and a larger economy.

every single time its resulted in lower tax intake compensated with more deficit spending.

	▲	hunterpayne 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Everytime we increase taxes past the optimum point of the Laffer curve, the government takes in less total tax. If you aren't past the optimum point, it won't. And your claims about loss of collected taxes haven't really ever come true at the US federal level. Total tax receipts in the 1980s were very high and there were several major tax cuts then. The same pattern usually follows, but the effect of the Laffer curve was deformed during the 1990s due to the dot com boom. Tax cuts in the 2000s increased tax receipts. The Trump cuts in the late 2010s did the same. The last 6 CA tax increases all resulted in less taxes being collected the following year. Now there are multiple things that can impact total tax collected for CA (mostly the S&P500), but those factors all varied in those 6 tax increases. As for federal tax, if a tax cut doesn't result in an increase in taxes collected, then you are likely below the optimum point in the curve. PS The government doesn't have a tax collection problem, it has a spending problem. On average, every public sector job costs 3 jobs in the private sector. If the size of a government is choking the economy, then messing about with the tax rate won't fix the problem.

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triceratops 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> And you wonder why Mississippi is richer than the UK

Because Mississippi didn't have Brexit /s

All jokes apart I don't see any real evidence that Mississippi is richer than the UK. Their median household disposable income is pretty damn close ($49k vs $54k). The UK has a better social and health safety net (where would you rather be unemployed or disabled?).

Mississippi has much lower life expectancy than the UK (69 vs 79 for men). Crudely speaking a Briton makes $5k less/year but lives 10 years longer - a trade almost anyone would make in a heartbeat.

I won't bother digging into other quality of life indicators vs economic indicators but I expect Mississippi will be mostly equal or worse.

On average Mississippi may have higher dollar numbers on a spreadsheet. That doesn't mean squat for the ordinary person on the street. If anything this is an argument against trickle-down economics/the Laffer curve.

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hunterpayne 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Mississippi has far better food and better weather so I don't think life is better in the UK. Also, I have no idea where you got the life expectancy number from, but its not current. I suspect its just a bit old. Its currently like 74 and mostly that's the effect of the Oxy epidemic which is going away with time.

I have been to the UK and I have been to Mississippi. Quality of life in Mississippi is far higher unless you really really like musicals (London is big for those). Mississippi has a better history of music and writing over the last 100-150 years. The food is cheaper and far more tasty. The weather is warm and winters are mild. They generally don't get natural disasters unless you live right by the coast and even then its once in 70 years. The health care is far higher quality. The people are warm and friendly. And the cost of living is lower.

The British are known for being miserable for a reason.

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greenie_beans 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

fwiw, we get bad hurricanes more than that and also the mid-south is the new tornado alley. there was a very bad ice storm this past winter. natural disasters happen everywhere. and it's hot AF in july and august, like so hot that you stay inside all day.

	▲	hunterpayne 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Tell that to someone from Oklahoma and be prepared to run. Also, AC is cheap and available everywhere. PS We had bad ice storms where I live (certainly far worse than MS) 2 winters ago. I wouldn't call it a natural disaster. PPS Remember we are comparing the weather to the UK, not Hawaii or San Diego.

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triceratops 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

None of these reasons have anything to do with economics. They are personal preferences.

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hunterpayne 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Oh, and post-war British music wouldn't exist without Mississippi. Pink Floyd is literally named after 2 musicians from Mississippi. The Beatles musical style started out by copying music from Mississippi. And the list goes on from there. Just saying, large chunks of British culture are copied from Mississippi and the surrounding areas.

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cindyllm 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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