“Reagan’s tax cuts doubled federal tax receipts.”
That’s not all accountable to tax cuts. Deficit spending, the business cycle, population growth, employment participation rate, there was a lot of things that contributed to the increase in tax receipts.
Lawrence Lindsey ran a study on the Reagan program published as “The Growth Experiment” and it accounted for all that stuff. He was Reagan’s senior staff economist for tax policy.
Population expansion is an under-attributed aspect of a lot of different dynamics in federal and state spending. I agree with your thoughts on that.
Of course if you have administrations like GHWB, GW, and for the most part Obama, that population factor doesn’t enter in, because jobs simply didn’t increase like normal under those presidents. Under Reagan, they did. And they did in no small measure because of his economic policies.
Surprisingly, jobs grew nicely under Carter and Clinton too. Clinton had the benefit of a Republican majority to reign him in and institute fairly sound economic policy, but Carter didn’t. Luckily he only got one term to work his majic.
I would say that deficit spending really undercut Reagan’s successes. While the federal government tax receipts doubled under him, spending tripled during his two terms.
Part of that was attributable to rebuilding our military, but Congress spent like drunken sailors, and there wasn’t much Reagan could do about it. He needed his spending and they demanded theirs. Sometimes you have to go along to get along. It was paramount that we rebuild our military, and IMO it accomplished the goal, ending the Cold War.
A number of the same factors that existed under Reagan, exist again today. Business will take off due to Trump’s policies.