answer:@ETpro, in researching your links (and doing a little more research on my own), I found it interesting that both demand-side and supply-side supporters reach as far back as James Hamilton (first US Secretary of the Treasury). Hamilton’s 1791 Monetary Reform is an essay by Libertarian Joe Cobb, and this excerpt from Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country by Thom Hartmann both cite Hamilton as the “father” of demand side economics, although many will only trace it back to John Maynard Keynes Most supply siders will cite Ronald Reagan as the father of their discipline, along with Jude Wanniski, although some also attempt to trace the theory back to Hamilton. I think the past 30–40 years of bubble economics disproves the supply-side theory as a over-arching model for economics. The lack of regulations, the lowering of taxes on high income earners and the loss of actual production in the US has put us into the biggest economic crunch since the Great Depression. If we look at the past 80 years, we notice that the most productive years, the 1950’s and 1960’s had the highest taxes on extremely high income earners, sometimes as high as 90%! What this did was incent a high earner (say, an executive of a corporation) to invest the corporations profits rather than take a higher salary. When the corporation had a lot of cash, it would invest the cash. In what? In R&D, which in turn would lead to more products, more jobs producing those products, more jobs to supply and convert the raw materials needed to produce those products. Add to that a tarriff system that makes it more profitable to manufacture goods in the US than to import them, and you have a society with an economy that is able to afford healthcare for all; a society where a family does not have to declare bankruptcy because of something like a debilitating illness or injury; a society that takes care of its elders; a society that has a strong thriving infrastructure. In short, you have the Great Society of LBJ. Too bad that was derailed by the war in Vietnam…