Poll of the Day > I can't believe this jerk got a presidential medal of freedom!

(+) Yeah! (+)

In all the outrage over Rush getting it, I guess this mostly flew under the radar?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/trump-awards-medal-to-controversial-tax-cut-champion-laffer

Laffer, 78, who was an aide to President Ronald Reagan, is known for his eponymous curve, which supposes that taxation rates beyond a certain level can prove counterproductive by discouraging work. The argument is frequently cited by Republican lawmakers, including Trump, in support of tax cuts.
Generally, the idea that lowering tax rates will increase revenue has been disproven time and time again, said Joel Slemrod, professor of business economics and public policy and director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigans Ross School of Business.
It certainly makes tax cuts look more attractive if you claim you wont lose revenue, so its very attractive politically to claim it -- but its almost never true, he said.

In 2012, the state of Kansas hired Laffer to advise then-Governor Sam Brownback as he prepared his own tax cut proposal. The economist, who was paid $75,000 according to the Kansas City Star, argued that deep tax cuts would spur growth that would create more jobs and bring in more payroll tax revenue during a series of appearances in Topeka.
More employment, more output, more production, he said in an interview with NPR at the time.
Laffer was assisted in his Kansas campaign by the co-author of his Trump book, Stephen Moore, whom the president tried to place on the Federal Reserves board of governors this year. Moore attended the Medal of Freedom ceremony on Wednesday.
In fact, Brownbacks cuts -- which he described as a real-life experiment for the school of supply-side economics espoused by Laffer -- led to job growth far below expectations and a massive budget shortfall. Private sector job growth in Kansas following the cut was lower than all of the states neighbors except Oklahoma, and less than half the national growth rate, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Steep declines in state revenues led to deficits of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
In June 2017, the Kansas legislature overrode Brownbacks veto of a bill that rolled back some $1.2 billion in tax cuts over two years, in a bipartisan repudiation of Laffers plan.
Laffer has said the problem in Kansas was that Brownbacks tax cut didnt go far enough. When you put an atomic bomb on a place, it will materially change the place but a cherry bomb probably wont change the buildings or anything else, he told The Guardian in 2017.

This dude's an utter fucking sociopath, and his policies have been ruining lives for forty fucking years! Honestly him getting the award is even more atrocious to me than Rush getting it. What do you think?

Bonus: clip of Arthur Laffer being COMPLETELY FUCKING WRONG in 2006 about the economy, as proven by the Great Recession. Unsung hero Peter Schiff owned his ass!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYkFYdLTTw8

Mr Hangman posted...

The Laffer Curve is obviously true, at the extremes.

Even if I just take that at face value as true, does anyone w/ the slightest bit of intellect actually think a real world government would operate at an extreme end of "no taxation / all the taxation"?

But even the people citing it I don't think are really dumb enough to think that tax rates are actually in a range that you can raise revenue by lowering them. They are just looking for intellectual cover for what they were going to do anyway. And if Laffer didn't give it to them, they'd easily find some other bullshit to slip in its place.

Of course they know better.
Skeptical on your final argument, though. If there are countless bs justifications for supply side economics, you'd think they'd have tried to employee them by now, rather than fall back on the same failed economic argument repeatedly. If for no other reason than to claim, "look at all these economic theories that back up cutting taxes!"
Whether anyone else would step in to fill the gap or not, the fact remains it's Laffer who's gladly taken that mantle all of this time and sold his soul.
Fuck him.

Leave Lunch Rimjaub alone he cant help the fact that hes a horrid sack of shit

---