Republican tax plans don't add up

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Trump's plan would decrease federal revenue coming from the top 1 percent by $312 billion, and by $151 billion for the top 0.1 percent. Trump's plan is not as generous to the superrich as Cruz's, but overall it calls for the most massive tax cuts — with no offsetting spending reductions — of any of the Republican candidates. Cruz's plan would decrease federal revenue coming from the top 1 percent by $463 billion, and by $231 billion for the top 0.1 percent. That's part of a plan that is, in general, much more generous to the wealthy than any of the other candidates' plans, according to Vox's Dylan Matthews.

Here’s how much each presidential candidate would raise — or cut — taxes for the superrich - Vox

There are the two usual tricks around this:

2. Make huge cuts in public spending, but these can't be stated in advance as the numbers are so big they necessarily involve big cuts in programs like social security which are actually popular with Republican voters.
   
3. Just like the proverbial economist on a desert island assumes a tin opener for those whashed ashore cans of tuna, republicans assume a big increase in growth from those tax cuts for the super-rich. 
   

Experience of the last three decades show that rather than increase economic growth, tax cuts for the super-rich are actually more likely to reduce growth:

• Just as the tax increases under Clinton did not led to the predicted economic crisis (quite the opposite), the Bush tax cuts did nothing to spur growth.
  
• The super-rich already benefited a huge increase in income and wealth distribution in their favor. For instance, CEO to worker pay went from 20 times to 300 times from the 1970s. Rather than increasing growth this is reducing it. As Hanauer put it, if I earn 1000 times as much as my employees, I don't spend 1000 times as much..
  
• The mechanism through which this redistribution in favor of 'job creators' is supposed to work is they save more, which reduces interest rates, which leads to more investment. But interest rates are already at record low levels and companies have little reason to invest if the purchasing power of their customers doesn't increase. Rather than invest, they pay big dividends and buy back their own shares, 91% of the profits of S&P 500 companies were spent on dividends and buybacks..