It’s also common for economic ideas to be taken out of context. In an environment with 99% tax rate it’s beloved that lowering taxes will increase revenue. This is directly applicable when the sudden loss of government subsidies creates an effective 90+% tax rate within an income band resulting in people working less. Yet, politically the idea gets simplified to lowering taxes will always increase revenue which is false.

Austerity to the point of being able to pay down government debt is painful, that’s well known. Unchecked spending and unlimited growth in debt is however unsustainable.

>Yet, politically the idea gets simplified to lowering taxes will always increase revenue which is false.

Also this usually works short-term because companies and people still have the infrastructure from previous government spending.

When that infrastructure inevitably crumbles because the taxes don't suffice to support it 10 years down the road, it's too late, the infrastructure needed to create new businesses will be missing, leading to a downward spiral for the economy.

> Yet, politically the idea gets simplified to lowering taxes will always increase revenue which is false.

It's not so much that the idea was simplified to push a political agenda: Arthur Laffer himself, when popularizing the concept (with the eponymous Laffer Curve[1]), used it as an argument against tax raise in the US.

So the big problem with economics is not so much that its results are being hijacked by politicians to push their agenda, it's that most of them (at least most of the prominent ones) are in fact pushing their ideologies through their publications.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

But it is the same argument just at different points on the curve. Using the curve to argue against a tax raise just implies you are on the optimal point [for raising revenue] or somewhere to the right and arguing for a tax cut implies you are somewhere to the right. Notice both arguments have similar assumptions and the only difference is the unlikely possibility you are at the optimal point. Of course one of those arguments is stronger because it does include this unlikely possibility but not much stronger. I think the main argument is whether you are to the left or the right of the curve not whether you are at the optimal point.

Also, I’m assuming it’s unlikely the government has set the tax rate at the optimal rate to maximise revenue. But this assumption is probably dubious because even without explicit knowledge of the curve governments are probably pushed towards the optimal rate.

Popular/Prominent economists are generally tied to politics.

“The basic concept was not new; Laffer himself notes antecedents in the writings of the 14th-century social philosopher Ibn Khaldun and others.”

IMO, it’s says less about economics than it does democracy. You can find many “think tanks” which are paid to create papers in support various ideologies. This doesn’t guarantee what they are saying is incorrect, but it does many they gloss over any inconvenient caveats.

I don't disagree with you here, but the problem isn't just think tanks at this point, academics have been doing it as well, with university departments having their ideologies of choice for decades, and it's a self-reproducing situation since they select they students/researchers based on their views.