From Reagan to Reality: The Case Against Tax Cuts for the Rich (with Bruce Bartlett)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Republicans work at break-neck speed to push another round of massive tax cuts for the wealthy, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit our 2019 conversation with Bruce Bartlett, a Reagan policy adviser and key architect of the 1981 tax cuts. Bartlett explains how the trickle-down logic he once championed turned out to be economic snake oil, because tax breaks for the wealthy don’t grow the economy—they just grow inequality. Bruce Bartlett is an American historian and former economic adviser who helped draft the 1981 Reagan tax cuts. He served in senior roles under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, including at the Treasury Department and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Once a champion of supply-side economics, Bartlett is now a leading critic of trickle-down tax policy. This episode originally aired January 29, 2019. Social Media: @bartlettb.bsky.social @BruceBartlett Further reading: Trump tax bill will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit and leave 10.9 million more uninsured, CBO says The secret saga of Trump’s tax cuts Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics Bluesky: @pitchforkeconomics.bsky.social Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics LinkedIn: Pitchfork Economics Substack: The Pitch

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, pitchfork listeners, Goldie here. If you've been paying attention to the news, you've probably
0:05.5	heard a lot about Donald Trump's big, beautiful bill, which I guess is big and beautiful if you
0:12.2	happen to be one of the billionaires who will enjoy the tax cuts. For the rest of us, not so much.
0:19.3	So we thought now would be a good time to revisit a 2019
0:22.8	conversation we had with Bruce Bartlett, one of the architects of the Reagan tax cuts,
0:29.3	about whether tax cuts for rich people really do create growth. Spoiler alert, they don't.
0:37.8	The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.
0:47.2	The last five decades of trickle-down economics haven't worked.
0:51.0	But what's the alternative?
0:52.6	Middle-out economics is the answer. Because the middle
0:55.6	class is the source of growth, not its consequence. That's right.
1:05.0	This is Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer, a podcast about how to build the economy from the middle out.
1:12.6	Welcome to the show.
1:14.6	Hi there, I'm Jess and Farrell, and I am a former state representative from Northeast Seattle,
1:26.6	and in the legislature, I served for five
1:29.1	years fighting for working families. And now I work with Nick Hanauer at Civic Ventures.
1:34.4	So there isn't a more common claim in our economic discussions than the idea that tax cuts for rich people create growth or tax cuts for big corporations create growth.
1:50.0	It's a thing that has been offered to Americans again and again and again and again for decades now,
1:57.0	starting, of course, with Ronald Reagan and the neoliberals in the late 70s and early
2:01.7	80s. And certainly has to be a thing that you heard a lot in the legislature.
2:07.1	For sure. I mean, this is one of the great national myths that play out every single day
2:13.5	in the decisions of policymakers, that somehow when you're giving tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations,
	...

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