Free Republic

Americans are right to be feeling so down about the economy, according to Art Laffer. The former economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan said Saturday that he can understand why people's views on the jobs market, inflation, and growth remain negative, despite a strong 2023 where price pressures cooled and the US managed to dodge a long-expected recession. "Let me just give you where the huge disconnect comes here," he told Fox Business. "People care about jobs, not unemployment rates, and so when you look at total jobs, it's way down."

In 2022 Norway’s third richest man, Kjell Inge Røkke, announced in an open letter to shareholders he was moving to Lugano, Switzerland. “My capital will continue working in Norway,” wrote the fishing magnate turned industrialist who launched his empire four decades ago with a 69-foot trawler he bought while saving money working on ships off the coast of Alaska. Røkke, who Forbes estimates has a fortune of $5.1 billion, will cost the Norwegian government an estimated 175,000,000 kroner annually (roughly $16 million) with his departure. That might not sound like a lot of money, but Røkke is not the only...

Rising interest rates have put a chill on real estate sales across the country, but an added factor has put the freeze on the Los Angeles luxury housing market. Last fall L.A. voters approved a measure known as the “mansion tax” (formally referred to as United for Housing L.A. or ULA) to “fund affordable housing projects and provide resources to tenants at risk of homelessness,” according to the Los Angeles Office of Finance. Ever since it went into effect luxury home sales have stalled out in the city. Starting on April 1, the measure instituted a 5.5 percent charge on...

Economist Arthur Laffer weighed in on the trade talks between the United States and China, touting what a deal between the two could do for the market. Laffer agreed with President Donald Trump’s assertion that such a deal could boost the Dow Jones Industrial Average 10,000 points. “I think he’s right about 10,000 on the Dow,” Laffer told Fox Business Network “Mornings” host Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. “I mean, that’s a pull out of a hat, but frankly, it’s a huge thing for that because it starts having a dynamic consequence with the rest of the world — Japan, South...

Most people plod through life, having an impact on their family and friends, but not much on the rest of humanity. Rulers and despots can impact most everyone’s life, as can those who are responsible for great scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Some musicians and athletes bring pleasure to millions. In other fields, such as economics, it is hard to identify individuals who created much in the way of pleasure or pain, or even directly useful knowledge for his or her fellow man. President Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to economist Arthur B. Laffer, the...

President Trump won a victory for freer trade last week when he and the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, agreed to find ways to lower tariffs and other barriers to each other’s exports. The outlines of the deal are still sketchy, but it calls for the Europeans to buy more American petroleum, soybeans and manufactured goods and for Mr. Trump to reduce his auto and steel tariffs. We were particularly heartened that Mr. Trump and the Europeans now have a handshake agreement to aim for zero tariffs on both sides of the Atlantic. This was Mr. Trump’s idea....

Tax Cuts: The latest monthly Treasury report on taxes and spending shows that gross tax receipts in February were $1.4 billion higher than the year before. Weren't the Republican tax cuts supposed to explode the deficit? X According to the report, the government took in $238.2 billion in taxes in February. The year before, tax revenues were $236.8 billion. For fiscal year 2018, which started last October, taxes are up $50.5 billion compared with the same months last year, and are at a record high level for this five-month span. The report does show that net receipts were lower in...

The unsung hero of the GOP Christmas gift of a tax cut is Arthur Laffer -- the Reagan economist who helped devise the Gipper's tax reductions. Those tax cuts rebuilt the U.S. economy in the 1980s and pulled us out of the mini-depression of high inflation and unemployment in the late 1970s. Some 30 years later, Laffer has struck again. House Speaker Paul Ryan tells me that there "were very few economists who had a bigger impact on this tax bill than Laffer. Believe, me our (Republican) members listen to him." Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus,...

Art Laffer is a famous economist, one of the brains behind President Ronald Reagan's supply-side tax cuts in 1981. But he was also a political adviser to Reagan and other presidential candidates. Based on history rather than polls or demographics, he insists Donald Trump will win the presidential race—and win easily. History is an argument not often heard in presidential elections except in one case: the likelihood that after one party holds the White House for eight years, that party probably won't win four more years. The one exception in the past half-century was the election of George H.W. Bush...

Love to see everyone enjoying the afterglow of this amazing GOP Convention. Haven’t felt like this politically since 1980. I think morning is once again coming to America. Art Laffer, economist, has analyzed Trumps chances and it brought up some thoughts I have on the Laffer Curve. I love the curve but I hate the terminology... Laffer and Reagan brought us an unprecedented and historic 25 years of growth and prosperity until the Left finally shut it down. Tax cuts are a must, but we need to flip the reasoning - we need to change the terminology and the paradigm...

Art Laffer is a famous economist, one of the brains behind President Ronald Reagan's supply-side tax cuts in 1981. But he was also a political adviser to Reagan and other presidential candidates. Based on history rather than polls or demographics, he insists Donald Trump will win the presidential race—and win easily. History is an argument not often heard in presidential elections except in one case: the likelihood that after one party holds the White House for eight years, that party probably won't win four more years. The one exception in the past half-century was the election of George H.W. Bush...

For those who remember the record-breaking era of economic prosperity that was the Reagan years, you will be happy to learn that the Team Trump is at this very moment receiving advice from some of the most influential economic policy advisers who helped shape that Reagan-era success. Names like Laffer, Moore, and Kudlow were once synonymous with an America that saw itself push back from the deep doldrums of the Carter economic morass, and Team Trump, with the encouragement of Trump campaign supervisor Paul Manafort, is now working to bring a version of that 1980’s success to 2017 and beyond....

Arthur Laffer of Laffer Associates reacts to presidential candidate Ted Cruz's tax plan, in which Cruz proposes individuals above certain income threshold pay a 10 percent flat tax, and a 16 percent flat tax on companies. http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000509983

As we've cheerfully noted on these pages, the good news on the presidential campaign trail is that almost all Republicans are now for serious pro-growth tax reform and simplification. Every candidate wants lower rates (some a one-rate flat tax), fewer loopholes and carve-outs, and a reduced role for an abusive IRS. What a contrast with Bernie Sanders, who declared at last week's Democratic debate that he could live with a 90% tax rate on the rich. Why not take it all, Bernie? All the GOP tax plans look good to us — though some are admittedly better than others. The...

This was Neal Cavuto last night.

'Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," may well be President Reagan's most oft-repeated quote. And the reason it's so frequently quoted is because it's so damn true. And no example fits this quote better than the government actions taken before and during the Great Depression. In 1929, the single largest tax increase on traded products was passed by both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate. In May 1930, this so-called Smoot-Hawley tariff was signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, which precipitated massive retaliation on U.S. products by foreign governments. From that moment...

Regular readers know that I don’t approve of drug use, but that I also favor legalization because the Drug War has been a costly and ineffective failure.(And it’s led to horrible policies such as intrusive money-laundering laws and Orwellian asset-forfeiture laws).So I was happy when folks in Colorado voted to decriminalize marijuana use, even if part of me didn’t like the idea that politicians would gain a new source of tax revenue.If nothing else, what’s happening in Colorado (and Washington state) will be an interesting social experiment.And even though we only have a modest bit of data, I’m going to be...

An ambitious plan to cut income taxes in Kansas will end up costing the state more money than it initially estimated after a key ratings agency downgraded the state’s debt on Wednesday. Standard & Poor’s cited structural imbalances created by the tax cut in its decision to slice Kansas’s bond rating from AA+ to AA. That means Kansas will have to offer a higher interest rate to lenders when it issues new bonds. The package of tax cuts, backed by Gov. Sam Brownback (R) and his conservative allies in the state legislature, was never offset with equal spending cuts, S&P...

The idea that lowering tax rates can lead to higher revenue collections from increased economic activity is not a new one. Nor is this observation unique to tax policy. A business may lower the price of a good and see a higher profit as many more people choose to purchase that good for the cheaper price. But Arthur Laffer, an economist in the Reagan administration and co-author of ALEC’s Rich States, Poor States report, is credited with popularizing this idea through his “Laffer Curve.” However, many advocates of ever-increasing tax rates accuse promoters of this common sense principle as only...

Government stimulus spending, paid for by running up the federal credit card, is why we have the never-ending Great Recession, though the left keeps fantasizing that spending “saved us from a second great depression.” But the best evidence of his shrinking agenda is the trend in federal spending. It’s falling, and not at a trickle. Think Niagara (figure 1). Many Americans who have sucked up the Keynesian vapors floating around in the ether cannot imagine that government spending actually hurts the economy. But we would love for the government-as-stimulus crowd to explain the chart below of government spending versus unemployment...