Some counterintuitive ideas are fine. Others counterintuitive ideas are stupid (and self-serving).

A counterintuitive idea popular among conservatives is that helping the rich makes them productive while helping the poor makes them lazy. Another is that cutting taxes on the rich increases what the government collects in taxes. Sure it does!

From CBS News:

Tax cuts for the wealthy have long drawn support from conservative lawmakers and economists who argue that such measures will “trickle down” and eventually boost jobs and incomes for everyone else. But a new study from the London School of Economics says 50 years of such tax cuts have only helped one group — the rich.

The new paper by [two British economists] examines 18 developed countries — from Australia to the United States — over a 50-year period from 1965 to 2015. The study compared countries that passed tax cuts in a specific year, such as the U.S. in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan slashed taxes on the wealthy, with those that didn’t, and then examined their economic outcomes. 

Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t, the study found. 

But the analysis discovered one major change: The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered. Instead of trickling down to the middle class, tax cuts for the rich may not accomplish much more than help the rich keep more of their riches and exacerbate income inequality, the research indicates.

“Based on our research, we would argue that the economic rationale for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak” said a co-author of the study. “In fact, if we look back into history, the period with the highest taxes on the rich — the postwar period — was also a period with high economic growth and low unemployment.”

Unquote.

But not to worry, conservatives! Facts have a well-known liberal bias.