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If President Obama wants to help the economy enormously - and make life simpler for countless Americans - he has a powerful tool at his disposal: the flat tax. My advice for him would be to push for an efficient, low-rate flat tax to replace the entire current maze of confusing, complicated, counterproductive federal taxes. If he succeeds, the results would be stunning. Obama certainly has both the political mandate and content of character to get this done. Remember, too, that the idea has a long pedigree in Democratic politics: Its origins lie with Presidents Harry Truman and John Kennedy...

Arthur Laffer of the famous Laffer curve comes across rather poorly. No conservative, he argues in favor of giving the government more money so it can do more.

This video of Peter Schiff debating Arthur Laffer back in 2006 has been making the rounds on the web. Schiff was Ron Paul's economic advisor during Paul's run for the Republican presidential nomination this year. Paul lost that race, but just about everything he predicted has come true in the interim. Paul's most depressing - in both the emotional and economic senses - prediction was that the U.S. couldn't maintain an economy based on the easy money flowing out of the Fed.

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 or production. Asset values fall sharply and wipe out those who borrowed and lent too much, thereby redistributing wealth from the foolish to the prudent. This process is the topic of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "Fooled by Randomness." David GothardWhen markets are free, asset values...

Just two weeks ago, a book on economic policy was released that will be a classic for the ages. Entitled The End of Prosperity, by Art Laffer, Steve Moore, and Peter J. Tanous, the book explains in full detail the economic disaster that will befall America if it takes a sharp left turn to neo-socialism under the leadership of the far left President Barack Obama, the ultraleft Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with 60 liberal Democrat Senators, and their pal the ultraliberal Howard Dean heading the Democrat party. Indeed, one of the insights of...

A seven and one half minute explanation of what the Laffer curve is. This is one of three parts; the remaining two have not been posted at YouTube yet. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIqyCpCPrvU

Over the past 30 years, the U.S. has seen large changes in income tax rates as well as other tax rates. And, as would be expected, the budgetary implications of these tax changes have once again become a hotly debated partisan issue. But missing from the discussion are the huge differences in how the top 1% of income earners respond to changes in tax rates versus, say, the bottom 75% or 80% of taxpayers -- the so-called middle class and lowest income groups. The "rich" quite simply are not like the rest of us. (snip) The important point here is...

The choice is stark, according to a new report by economists Art Laffer and Steve Moore published by the American Legislative Exchange Council. State policymakers can choose growth and prosperity or they can choose economic hari-kari. During the 1990s, Arizona chose growth and prosperity. Where Arizona's total state and local tax burden had risen to 11.8 percent by 1991, it has since fallen to 10.3 percent. The result has been phenomenal growth and unparalleled peacetime economic opportunity for this state. Michigan, on the other hand, has chosen a different path in recent years. While that state historically had a lower...

If you're searching for the next big thing in American politics, it's wise to keep an eye on the states. Here's one possibility: the abolition of state income taxes. In Georgia, Missouri and South Carolina, Governors and state legislatures are drafting serious proposals to repeal their income taxes to promote economic development. St. Louis, one of America's most distressed cities, may overturn its wage/income tax as a way to spur urban revival. And in Michigan, the legislature is in the last stages of phasing out its hated business income tax -- the most onerous in the land. "States are now...

Although most economists keep insisting that their discipline is all about peaceful competition, it’s increasingly clear that they need to do violence to language and logic when defending today’s U.S. globalization policies. The latest example: Arthur B. Laffer’s recent suggestion in a Wall Street Journal article that the term "trade deficit" is a misnomer. Instead, insisted the "Father of Supply-Side Economics" and former guru to President Reagan, Americans should call their country’s bloated excess of imports over exports a "capital surplus" – reflecting the borrowing from abroad needed to sustain it. Unfortunately for the United States, word games can’t possibly...

... CBO informed lawmakers in May 2003 that the tax cuts would cost the treasury $94 billion in 2006. But it now appears that the cuts generated so much “unexpected” economic activity that the original CBO projection for 2006 was off by an astounding $124 billion! Add in last year’s underestimation of $89 billion, and the $25 billion oversight in 2004, and you have a cumulative CBO mistake that now totals $238 billion.

July 10, 2006 Edition Laffer's Victory New York Sun Editorial July 10, 2006 It's official — Arthur Laffer wins. New data show federal revenues surged in the first three quarters of the current fiscal year. Corporate tax receipts are up more than 26% over the same period last year, ringing in at $250 billion. Individual income tax collections, at $791 billion, are up 14% over the first nine months of fiscal 2005. The Congressional Budget Office projects corporate tax receipts will total $330 billion by the end of the fiscal year. As a result, the deficit for the year is...

WASHINGTON, 8 July — An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief. On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year's levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago.

In this column, I'm focusing on bad economics. In fact, I'm going to write about what I consider to be the two worst economic ideas -- or at least ideas that pass as economics, though both have been thoroughly repudiated by nearly all credible thinkers. .... For the sake of political balance, I'll skewer a favorite of the right in this column, and then a favorite of the left in my next piece. The Laffer Curve Economist Arthur Laffer made a very interesting supposition: If tax rates are high enough, then cutting taxes might actually generate more revenue for the...

Stop Lying About Tax Cuts March 29, 2006 By Herman Cain Every good liberal will tell you that low tax rates cause tax revenues to drop, hurt the economy, benefit only the wealthy and cause skyrocketing budget deficits. A Wall Street Journal article last week blew a hole in those liberal lies. The Journal reported that federal tax revenues for the first five months of fiscal year 2006 are up 10.3 percent from the same period a year ago. The 2006 revenue growth adds to a 15 percent tax revenue increase from 2004 to 2005. This good fortune for U.S....

But how likely is it that the Laffer curve is causing revenues to rise, as opposed to normal operation of the business cycle? Not much, in my opinion. First of all, the Laffer curve came to prominence during a period when the top tax rate on dividends was 70 percent, and the rate on long-term capital gains was 40 percent. Economist Arthur Laffer correctly pointed out that a 100 percent tax rate would raise no revenue and that rates close to this would reduce revenue below what a lower rate would bring in. Given the tax rates in existence, it...

Ronald Reagan once said an economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory. So why is it that when confronted with a concept that works in both practice and theory, so many people refuse to believe it? The Laffer Curve, popularized by economist Arthur Laffer, says the government can maximize tax revenue by setting the tax rate at ... The logic is obvious on the ends of the spectrum: if the tax rate is 0%, the government collects no money. If it is 100%, people have no reason to earn,...

Increase of 2.8 cents a gallon will begin Jan. 1 -- the biggest one-time jump in nearly 20 years, the N.C. Department of Revenue told the Observer Thursday. The latest tax increase, to 29.9 cents a gallon, will push North Carolina from having the nation's eighth-highest state gas tax to the sixth. "They're imposing a higher tax when the pain will be getting worse," said Mark Cooper, research director for the Consumer Federation of America. Republican state lawmakers proposed capping the gas tax at 24.6 cents to ease the pain of pump prices that passed $3 after Hurricanes Katrina and...

Invented by Arthur Laffer, this curve shows the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue collected by governments... as taxes increase from low levels, tax revenue collected by the government also increases. It also shows that tax rates increasing after a certain point would cause people not to work as hard or not at all, thereby reducing tax revenue. Eventually, if tax rates reached 100% , then all people would choose not to work because everything they earned would go to the government.

The Laffer Curve in Action Can tax receipts rise if taxes are cut? Yes. Here’s more proof. By Jerry Bowyer Another month, another vindication of the Laffer curve. The Treasury Department has released its budget report for the month of November. The report shows that federal receipts for the last two months (the first two of fiscal year 2006) amount to $288 billion. This is up from the first two months of fiscal year 2005 ($271 billion), fiscal year 2004 ($254 billion), and fiscal year 2003 ($244 billion). In other words, federal tax receipts have risen over this time period...