A sound tax system is simple to understand, not overly costly to implement, and minimizes economic distortions. Compared to other state, Texas’ current tax system is sound, but it can be improved by repealing property taxes and replacing the revenues with a reformed sales tax. Download full publication here.
Federal spending comes with costs and should not be accepted as the “free lunch” it is frequently considered to be. As states consider whether to accept federal stimulus funds, this paper examines the cost of those federal funds and argues that an increase in the government expenditure wedge will reduce growth in the economy, resulting…
About a year ago Stephen Moore, Peter Tanous and I set about writing a book about our vision for the future entitled “The End of Prosperity.” Little did we know then how appropriate its release would be earlier this month. Financial panics, if left alone, rarely cause much damage to the real economy, output, employment…
The Wall Street Journal 12/10/07 A record eight million Americans moved from one state to another last year. Where is everyone going, and why? The answer has little to do with climate: California has arguably the nicest climate of any state in the nation – yet in this decade more Americans have left the Golden…
The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name isn’t one of the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. It began with a 1978 article published by Jude Wanniski in The Public Interest entitled, “Taxes, Revenues, and the ‘Laffer Curve.’” As recounted by Wanniski (associate editor of the Wall Street Journal at the time), in December of 1974 he had been invited to have dinner with me (then professor at the University of Chicago), Don Rumsfeld (chief of staff to President Gerald Ford) and Dick Cheney (Rumsfeld’s deputy and my former classmate at Yale) at the Two Continents Restaurant at the Washington Hotel in\ Washington, D.C. (just across the street from the Treasury). While discussing President Ford’s “WIN” (Whip Inflation Now) proposal for tax increases, I supposedly grabbed my napkin and a pen and sketched a curve on the napkin illustrating the trade off between tax rates and tax revenues. Wanniski named the trade off “The Laffer Curve.”
The Wall Street Journal 10/15/96 Bob Dole’s proposal to cut income tax rates by 15% across the board and halve the capital gains tax rate has resurrected all sorts of issues from the policy debates of the Reagan ’80s. The Dole plan also stands — notwithstanding Jack Kemp’s unavailing arguments for it in last week’s…
International Herald Tribune, Zurich – August 24/25, 1985 Washington – … The bulk of U.S. tax cuts began on Jan. 1, 1983, and the economic recovery began at the same time. Isn’t it amazing how tax reductions do not work until they take effect? More to the point, the downturn of 1981 and 1982 as…
L.A. Times 3/4/80 Amid the crash and clatter of the presidential primaries, a quiet assault on America is proceeding unnoticed. The combatants are Americans and Japanese. Ironically, the assault on the American standard of living is being mounted by the Americans, while the Japanese defend us against our own worst inclinations. President Carter’s personally commissioned…
