Laffer Quotes

#1. The Laffer Curve illustrates the basic idea that changes in tax rates have two effects on tax revenues: the arithmetic effect and the economic effect.

Arthur Laffer

#2. When you look at the government, when the government collects a buck, it's not free. They have to spend resources, the IRS, audits, all this sort of crap, to collect the dollar. I'm not assuming any Laffer curve effect here at all. There are just transactions costs of collecting that money.

Arthur Laffer

#3. I used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in my classes and with anyone else who would listen to me to illustrate the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues.

Arthur Laffer

#4. The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me.

Arthur Laffer

#5. The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name begins with a 1978 article by Jude Wanniski in 'The Public Interest' entitled, 'Taxes, Revenues, and the Laffer Curve.'

Arthur Laffer

#6. I mean, everyone agrees with stress tests for banks. I mean that's clear. But banks should do that on their own. And they should worry about their own capital functioning. That's what they should do. It shouldn't be a government function.

Arthur Laffer

#7. My godfather was a man named Justin Dart. Some of you may remember Justin Dart. My younger son's name is Justin, named after Justin Dart. I was executor of his estate, and he was my godfather. I first really got time to spend with Ronald Reagan with Justin Dart personally, one-on-one.

Arthur Laffer

#8. If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.

Arthur Laffer

#9. You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.

Arthur Laffer

#10. The linkage between tax rates and public services is, if not non-existent, negative.

Arthur Laffer

#11. With the shrinking of the US economy, and it's shrinking very rapidly, you not only have more money, but you also have fewer goods. That's a classic double-whammy on inflation.

Arthur Laffer

#12. What you do by having an income tax rate reduction across the board, you really provide great incentives for people to work, produce, and increase output. So I would support a carbon tax in replacement for a progressive income tax.

Arthur Laffer

#13. The income effects in an economy always sum to zero.

Arthur Laffer

#14. People can also change the timing of when they earn and receive their income in response to government policies.

Arthur Laffer

#15. And you can't have a prosperous economy when the government is way overspending, raising tax rates, printing too much money, over regulating and restricting free trade. It just can't be done.

Arthur Laffer

#16. And let the Fed sell bonds to bring bank reserves back down to required reserve levels, so we have restraint on bank lending and bank issuances of liability.

Arthur Laffer

#17. The trade deficit is the capital surplus and don't ever think of having a capital surplus as being a bad thing for our country.

Arthur Laffer

#18. We are having the single worst recovery the U.S. has had since the Great Depression. I don't care how you measure it. The East Coast knows it. The West Coast knows it. North, South, old, young, everyone knows it's the worst recovery since the Great Depression.

Arthur Laffer

#19. People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.

Arthur Laffer

#20. Taxes are not trivial - they're a huge portion of this overall economy. And that's why I focused on them.

Arthur Laffer

#21. You want to prove that Milton Friedman is a fascist? It's easy. Quote him.

Arthur Laffer

#22. The minimum wage is the black teenage unemployment act. It is the guaranteed way of holding the poor, the minorities and the disenfranchised out of the mainstream is if you price their original services too high.

Arthur Laffer

#23. The United States is a nation located in the global economy, and we get enormous, enormous benefits from dealing with foreigners.

Arthur Laffer

#24. I'm worried about economic growth in the United States. And the creation of jobs, output, and employment. And if you tax people who work, you're going to get less people working. And what the carbon tax would do is remove the tax from people who work and put it on a product in the ground.

Arthur Laffer

#25. The truth of the matter of is that stimulus money not only doesn't stimulate; it actually reduces output.

Arthur Laffer

#26. Obama is a fine, very impressive person. He really is. Unfortunately, everything that he is doing in economics is exactly wrong. He is a crappy president.

Arthur Laffer

#27. Raising taxes is not a frivolous venture that you do on the editorial page of 'The New Republic,' for god sakes. It's something that you really have to think about and go through carefully.

Arthur Laffer

#28. Sound money is the sine qua non of a prosperous society.

Arthur Laffer

#29. Ask me whether inflation represents longer-term problem. I think there's a potential there for excess reserves to create problems.

Arthur Laffer

#30. I've been truly blessed. I've been a fly on the wall of history. I've been just so many lucky places just by chance and serendipity, and obviously a huge portion of that serendipity had to do with my relationship with the real president, Ronald Reagan.

Arthur Laffer

#31. And just remember, every dollar we spend on outsourcing is spent on U.S. goods or invested back in the U.S. market. That's accounting.

Arthur Laffer

#32. Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

Arthur Laffer

#33. The zero-income-tax-rate states have far faster growth in tax revenues than did the states with highest income tax rate over the same period.

Arthur Laffer

#34. There are lots of other things that affect state growth besides state taxes. However, the reason I look at taxes is because these are policy variables that can be changed by state governments in order to get better results than they otherwise had.

Arthur Laffer

#35. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.

Arthur Laffer

#36. In 2010 the U.S. will have a payroll tax rate increase, an estate tax increase, and income tax increases. There's also a tax increase coming in 2010 on carried interest. This rate will rise from its current level of 15 percent to 35 percent, and then it will rise again in 2011.

Arthur Laffer

#37. The states that have large in-migrations of Hispanics are Florida, Texas and California. And Florida and Texas are way above average in educational achievement, while California's the lowest, just about.

Arthur Laffer

#38. When you look at the world, everyone in the world who cares about his or her family wants to have a major portion of their assets in the United States because we are the growth country and the freedom loving country.

Arthur Laffer

#39. Which would you rather have, capital lined up on your borders, trying to get into your country or trying to get out of your country? We are the capital magnet of this planet and we are the savior for not only people, for not only freedom, but also for capital.

Arthur Laffer

#40. I feel very uncomfortable with respect to looking at inflation.

Arthur Laffer

#41. It is not true that Congress spends money like a drunken sailor. Drunken sailors spend their own money. Congress spends our money.

Arthur Laffer