And there’s no clear evidence that lower tax burdens have helped the United States grow faster than other advanced industrial nations with higher tax rates and much heavier tax burdens. Economic growth per person in the United States was a little faster than in France or Australia over the last 40 years. But it was a little slower than in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a research organization for the world’s richest countries.

While high taxes do have an effect on variables that affect growth, many other factors are much more significant and overshadow whatever taxes do.

In high-tax European countries as varied as Germany, France, Britain and Denmark, productivity — or output per worker, the most important measure of a nation’s ability to generate wealth — grew faster than in the United States over the last 40 years. If income per person didn’t grow much faster it’s because people in those countries chose to devote much of their extra productivity to more leisure.

The average American worker spends 1,700 hours a year on the job, 100 fewer than in 1970. The average French worker, by contrast, works about 1,500 hours, 500 fewer than 40 years ago. Meanwhile, until the financial crisis struck, labor participation grew faster in the United States than in other rich countries, including Germany, Sweden and France.

Taxes probably played a role in this, most economists agree. Indeed, higher tax rates can reduce economic output because they change the decisions of workers, employers and investors. Income taxes reduce the rewards of work, potentially blunting the incentive to take a job. They can discourage paying for a costly higher education by reducing lucrative professions’ take home pay.

Higher corporate taxes at home can encourage American businesses to invest money abroad rather than in the United States. Differential tax rates pull investments into low tax sectors of the economy at the expense of others that might be more productive. Broadening the tax base by eliminating preferences and exemptions — an objective that Democrats and Republicans say they share — would reduce some of these distortions.