RECOMMENDED READING
Railway Safety Act Presents GOP Choice: Tired Dogma or the Common Good?
Oren Cass on Fox Business’s Making Money with Charles Payne
The 2023 Cost-of-Thriving Index

Can someone do a wellness check on America’s supply-side tax-cutters in the wake of Liz Truss’s decline and fall? From the American Enterprise Institute to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, lowering marginal tax rates has long been the prescription for pleasing “the market” and setting Western societies on the path to growth and prosperity. Here was a UK premier proudly advancing their preferred agenda—and “the market” revolted, triggering the collapse of her government.

This presents an existential question for these institutions: Was the purportedly pro-growth tax plan wrong, or was the market?

For most people, there is no quandary here. Tax cuts can be lousy, market signals don’t always prove value. But either thought negates a bedrock tenet of market fundamentalism: As former  US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has professed, “as we are dealing with changes in our economy, tax cuts are always a good idea.” According to historian (and former Journal editorialist) Amity Shlaes, meanwhile, “markets do not fail us. We fail markets.” So what happens when a tax cut fails the market?

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Oren Cass
Oren Cass is the executive director at American Compass.
@oren_cass
Recommended Reading
Railway Safety Act Presents GOP Choice: Tired Dogma or the Common Good?

The Railway Safety Act of 2023 is a potent signal of a sea-change in how conservatives in Washington are approaching their most basic task: governance for the common good.

Oren Cass on Fox Business’s Making Money with Charles Payne

Oren Cass joins Fox Business’s Charles Payne to discuss the Cost-of-Thriving Index and economic pressure on American families

The 2023 Cost-of-Thriving Index

Tracking the catastrophic erosion of middle-class life in America