Saturday, July 08, 2006

US Economy

Remember all those polls and surveys you hear and read about that tell what bad shape Americans think their economy is in? Let's look at some facts and ditch the emotion for just a moment:

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland, and Belgium.

But here's another suppressed fact: Since the 2003 tax cuts, tax-revenue collections from the expanding economy have been surging at double-digit rates while the deficit is constantly being revised downward.

Investors now keep nearly 50 percent more of their after-tax capital returns -- an enormous increase that has resulted in a remarkably profitable and highly productive business sector. While the overall economy has grown by one-fifth since mid-2003, private business investment has expanded by 37 percent.


There are several other facts in Kudlow's article--go read them if you find this kind of information interesting. I like his closing, however:

It is this American economic dynamism that separates our ongoing prosperity from the overtaxed and overregulated stutter-start stagnation of industrial economies in Western Europe and Japan.

Did someone say prosperity?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Darren -- what I would like to know is how much of this increase in the economy is war related? I would think a large percent of it is.

Thanks --

Elizabeth

Darren said...

I don't know, but I'd find it hard to believe that 20% of the US economy depends on the Global War on Terror.