Our co-founder Arthur Laffer’s new book Taxes Have Consequences is out and we will be holding events in Washington, DC (Jan 31), New York  (Feb 1), and Palm Beach (Feb 15) to celebrate this important book’s arrival. If you would like to attend one of these events, please contact us.

Here’s the concise one-paragraph executive summary of the book:

 “When the top tax rate has been high, as in the late 1910s, the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1970s, the response of those with money and capital has been to curtail real economic activity in favor of protecting assets and income streams. Huge declines have come to the economy in these circumstances. The most brutal example was the Great Depression itself. When the top tax rate has been cut and held at reduced levels—as in the 1920s, the 1960s, in the long boom of the 1980s and 1990s, and briefly in the late 2010s—astonishing reversals have occurred. The rich have brought their money out of hiding and put it to work in the economy. The huge swings in the American economy since 1913 have had an inverse relationship to income tax rates.”

Here is the evidence of rising revenues from the Reagan and Trump tax cuts. The green line is the tax share paid by the top 1% and the orange line is the top federal income tax rate.

Why is this SO hard for people to understand?