Top headline: Fox News, 4/8/2025
Bottom headline: New York Times, 6/25/2019
Steven Rattner opines in the New York Times:
Having diminished so many other great American traditions, President Trump has now moved on to debasing the Presidential Medal of Freedom by awarding it to the most destructive force in economic policy since Herbert Hoover.
That would be Arthur Laffer, popularizer of the Laffer Curve, which purports to prove that tax cuts can pay for themselves by stimulating economic activity.
Famously, Mr. Laffer put forward his concept in the 1970s not by means of the scholarly approach followed by legitimately distinguished economists but by drawing a simple sketch of his curve on a cocktail napkin.
Mr. Laffer’s argument was that higher taxes discourage work, so raising taxes results in less government revenue. Or, as Mr. Laffer preferred to think about it, cutting taxes could increase government revenue.
Instead, the new honoree unleashed nearly four decades of mostly runaway deficits and exploding national debt. [emphasis added]
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