{"id":177676,"date":"2019-07-14T19:06:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/07\/14\/reality-bitches-kansas-edition\/"},"modified":"2019-07-14T19:06:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T00:06:00","slug":"reality-bitches-kansas-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/07\/14\/reality-bitches-kansas-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Reality, Bitches, Kansas Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"
We all know that Sam Brownback promised that his radical program of slashing taxes would unleash an economic powerhouse.<\/div>\n

Rather unsurprisingly, it turned into a complete sh%$ show, with Kansas’ budget, economy, and infrastructure turning into a complete sh%$ show.<\/p>\n

Well, now that he has been replaced by someone who is \u2026\u2026\u2026 well \u2026\u2026\u2026 sane, Kansas’ economy and budget have made an impressive turn-around<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Residents of one midwestern state can be forgiven if they have a feeling they are not in Kansas<\/a> anymore. The Sunflower State finishes a respectable No. 19 overall in this year’s CNBC America’s Top States for Business rankings<\/a>. That is a 16-place jump from 2018<\/a>, making Kansas this year’s most improved state.<\/p>\n

One year ago Kansas was still nursing a hangover from a disastrous tax-cutting experiment by former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who slashed individual income-tax rates and eliminated taxes on “pass-through” income from certain businesses. Even though a bipartisan super-majority of the state legislature had repealed the Brownback program over his veto in 2017, the state was still dealing with a residual $351 million revenue shortfall for fiscal 2018, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.<\/a> In addition to its No. 35 overall ranking last year, Kansas finished a dismal No. 45 in the Economy category.<\/p>\n

This year the full force of the repeal has taken effect: The state is running a budget surplus. In addition to the 16-point improvement in its overall ranking, Kansas<\/a> rises 16 points in the Economy category.<\/p>\n

“We are returning to our roots as a very progressive, thoughtful, forward-looking state,” Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, told CNBC in an interview. Kelly was elected last year as part of the backlash over the Brownback plan.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Delusiona economics are a cruel mistress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know that Sam Brownback promised that his radical program of slashing taxes would unleash an economic powerhouse. Rather unsurprisingly, it turned into a complete sh%$ show, with Kansas’ budget, economy, and infrastructure turning into a complete sh%$ show. Well, now that he has been replaced by someone who is \u2026\u2026\u2026 well \u2026\u2026\u2026 sane, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[446,392,374,480,584],"class_list":["post-177676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-budget","tag-economy","tag-politics","tag-taxes","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}