"I’ll leave it to the reader to determine what to make of this fact as Congress considers lowering how much companies are taxed in coming years." The answer was found just a little further down where you related that taxes discourage an activity. I can't understand why, with the dearth of empirical documented, corrected over time, data available that these ideas aren't commonly held. I actually do.  If you look at what the "experts" in our institutions of higher (and now lower) education are using as facts, its readily apparent. The "tax & spend" or "lets be like the EU" wealth redistribution schemes aren't working. Never have, never will.  History tells us that. I was helping my friends daughter w/ some of her 1st grade math homework. The issue was addition & subtraction.  It depicted weighted scales, tipped further in one direction. The instructions were, "how many blocks should be taken away from the side w/ too much so that the scale has equality?" Not equivalence, but "equality".