We hope you will give read to a long profile story in the Washington Postabout our co-founder Arthur Laffer. While the story quotes economists like Robert Reich who calls him “a charlatan” (which is almost the textbook definition of projection), it makes the point that Laffer is arguably the most influential economist of the last several decades. From the remarkable success of the Reagan tax cuts and then the Trump tax cuts almost four decades later, the Laffer Curve keeps striking again, and it makes the left and the media furious.
Laffer has been back in the headlines for backing the Liz Truss tax rate cuts that are said to have been a failure – even though they never happened. We will quote from the Post story:
Laffer in early October publicly endorsed a dramatic tax-cutting plan proposed by Liz Truss, who was just getting settled in as Britain’s prime minister…. Two weeks later, and only 45 days after taking office, Truss resigned. Laffer has not backed down. He still thinks the cuts are what the country needs to revive its economy. “How can you reflect on the quality of a football team if you don’t let them on the playing field?” he asked on a recent Tuesday. “It was never tried.” Truss’s unveiling of her plan “without any forewarning of any sort almost guaranteed this sort of extreme reaction,” he said. The upheaval “shows the political response to the ideas but doesn’t have any reflection on the economics at all.”
That is, of course, unquestionably true. What seems to irritate the left is that his influence hasn’t waned in the least. As the Post article puts it:
His contention that tax cuts can stimulate the economy and increase government revenue has been echoed by generations of Republican leaders, including, most recently, President Donald Trump, whom Laffer advised on the tax cuts that became the administration’s signature legislative achievement.
Yes, and let’s hope they keep following his advice.
https://www.washingtonpost.
