Dr. Arthur Laffer is famous for the “Laffer Curve” he drew on a napkin in a flash of genius during a luncheon with Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Jude Wannaski who saved the napkin and put it in “The Way the World Works,” dubbing it “The Laffer Curve” to create one of the great myths of the DC Elected Ruling Class, ERC.
The Laffer curve has great resemblance to a female breast, riveting the attention of male economists. A dashed line through the maxima suggests the economy is optimum when tax rates are 50% Dr. Laffer was then a disciple of John Maynard Keynes, leaned to socialism as it is popular in academia where most of the money comes from taxes..
Unfortunately in Laffer's time the successes of Kennedy, Reagan and Gingrich with lower taxes drove Laffer to compromise facts. When I saw his famous "breast-like" curve in Jude Wanniski's book "The Way the World Works" it did not ring right with me.
In a public library three day grind in 1987 I quantified the concept by extracting and eliminating inflation for the gross domestic product over the population charting that with tax rates of America from 1776 to 1987. I drew a scattergram and a "means" curve through the data points to create what I call the Genesis Curve to commemorate the first time the concept is revealed in history, Genesis 47:26 in the Bible.
In the years we had that rate our economy expanded ten to 30%. These were also eras of great invention, innovation, economic freedom and opportunity followed by the corruption, greed and lies we suffer today.
Dr. Laffer dared not quantify his concept knowing Washington wants more power and money at the expense of the people. The more dependent we are on the elected ruling class the more they like it. These are people who dream of landing in great aircraft with huge throngs of people who fall to their knees yelling, "We are not worthy. We are not worthy."
Arthur Laffer may be a clever man, but in our book he is not a good Laffer.
Adrian Vance
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