The Kansas Economic Miracle
By 
Sam Brownback and Republican legislators conducted an experiment on the people of Kansas. As conservatives have long urged, they slashed taxes on the wealthy, raised taxes on the poor, and devastated social services. All of this was worth it because it would unleash amazing economic growth. How is that working out? Well:
The Philadelphia Fed released coincident indices today. Figure 1 shows state-by-state 3 month trends. Needless to say, the outlook for Kansas — that laboratory for supply side nostrums — is not auspicious.
While Alaska seems to be in the running for worst performing, in fact the 3 month (annualized) decline of 4.5% for Kansas is the worst in the 50 states.
It seems worth noting at this point that the chief goal of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell is to take the Kansas economic miracle formula national.
…Brave Sir Sam protecting his citizens from facts and their well-known liberal bias:
No wonder Gov. Sam Brownback and other state officials have killed a quarterly report aimed at telling Kansans how his policies are affecting the state economy.
Late this week I obtained copies of two recent reports (thanks to the Kansas Center for Economic Growth) that were produced by the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors but basically hidden from the public. Brownback is the council’s chairman.
The “Indicators of the Kansas economy” — from November 2015 and February 2016 — showed a state that’s in the dumps.
That’s especially true when compared to a six-state region selected by Brownback’s team (Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma) and to the United States as a whole.
Sadly for Kansans, this is part of a long-term trend created by Brownback’s ruinous policies, most notably his costly income tax cuts from 2012. The quarterly reports have been downbeat for years; here’s an example from 2014.