According to all reports, New York state's shoppers swamped malls and snapped up clothing as though it would never go out of style in response to a one week lifting of the sales tax on garments and shoes.

• New York City's residents spent $390 million in major retail stores over the seven-day holiday from their 8.25 percent sales tax -- compared with only $200 million on the same week in 1996.
• One men's apparel store reported a 300 percent jump in sales.

• A shoe-store manager said he was doing a week's worth of business every day.

• Upstate, crowds of highly-taxed Canadians flocked across the border into Buffalo for a tax-free buying spree.

New York City numbers-crunchers estimate that ending the sales tax altogether would draw over a billion dollars in spending and investment -- while creating over 17,000 jobs.

One city official said: "We learned something here. A lot of people in government think you can pile on taxes, and consumer behavior won't change. The Mayor's initiative shows that is just not true." This is essentially what Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives have been saying -- that dynamic scoring of the effect of tax cuts is long overdue, since people do change their economic behavior in face of changed circumstances, and supply-side economics works.

Source: Editorial, "Supply-Side New York," Wall Street Journal, January 30, 1997.