Steveh,
I don't have web sites to send you to and I stand corrected that probably "every serious economist" was an overstatement. I can rely, however, on Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman as pretty reputable sources for the position I stated. I visited the sites you linked to and note that they are a bit from the left persuasion. I can only approach the issue with some basic logic that seems to follow human nature. People seem to continually want to retain as much of the fruits of their labor as possible. We have also seen (probably from the prior motivation) that the more one taxes an activity, the less of that activity you will get. Now historically there is a solid correlation between taxe cuts and increases in tax revenues. This has happened multiple times in our history. We have also seen the reverse where taxes were increased and revenues, if they didn't go down, didn't rise. People will go to great lengths to avoid having their earnings taken away from them.

For example, the lowering of the captial gains taxes created a strong surge in business acquisitions (and therefore business selling). Good for the business owner? You betcha. Good for the economy? You betcha. The business changed hands and was often driven to new levels of productivity and the business owner freed up a large amount of capital that was "frozen" in his business. Like the melting of an large block of ice, the money to flowed into the economy. It seems insulting to say it, but the way some people carry on about someone "cashing out" and getting a windfall from something they built up with their labor and brains, you would think the money gets put in a box and buried, never to do any good. The money gets put to work; it gets spent for goods and services, its gets invested, even if it gets saved, its put to work (by the bank). The money is churned through the economy and that creates more economic activity which in the end enlarges the economy. A growing economy creates more jobs and opportunity.

I've never understood why liberals want so much of their toil taken from them. I've also never understood liberal's great faith in government. Humans seem to follow the dictum that power corrupt and increases in centralizing power tend to increase corruption, but that's another long thread. We all need to give some of our wealth to the government (our "commonwealth"), but it seems to me that the less government is set up to do for me, the more freedom I will have and the increase in personal freedom (along with personal capital) is overall a good thing.

David
H20