Chart of the day

Via none other than Paul Krugman:

Real federal revenue per capita

This is very, very interesting. Within a few years of implementing the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, the amount of revenue collected by the federal government on a real per capita basis was back to the same level as the peak of the the internet boom. Lower rates, same revenue. 

Related: Also check out this fact-check by The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler on how the budget surpluses of the 1990s came to be. Key excerpt:

Clinton, in essence, was lucky to become president just as a revolution in computer and information technologies was unleashed.

From 1992 to 1997, CBO estimated, revenue increased at an annual average of 7.7 percent in nominal terms, or about 2.4 percentage points faster than the growth of the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy. CBO Deputy Director James L. Blum in 1998 attributed only 1 percentage point of that extra tax revenue to the 1993 budget deal. The rest, he said, came from capital gains.

Read the whole thing.