Arthur Laffer quotes - page 2

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)
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. View quote
Arthur Laffer
While discussing President Ford's ‘WIN' (Whip Inflation Now) proposal for tax increases, I supposedly grabbed my napkin and a pen and sketched a curve on the napkin illustrating the trade-off between tax rates and tax revenues. Wanniski named the trade-off ‘The Laffer Curve.' View quote
Arthur Laffer
In the 1990's, we had the largest cut in government spending as a share of GDP in the history of the U.S. In the 1990's, we were doing free trade, we passed NAFTA, we went through there. We were for lowering interest rates and controlling money far better. And we weren't regulating nearly as much. We had welfare reform and all of those wonderful things. We had the biggest tax cut in our nation's history. Any comparison between today and the 1990's, it's totally inappropriate. Bill Clinton, as bad a person as he was, was a good president. View quote
Arthur Laffer
I don't think we have to do it by government spending. My view is I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity. The government doesn't create resources. The government redistributes them, and it redistributes them from workers and producers to people they get the resources based on some characteristic of the work effort. So what you really need to do is I think you need to incentivize producers, and what you need to go along, and my way of going would be Simpson-Bowles. Something to lower the tax rates, broaden the base, get rid of the loopholes. I mean really get a production base that officially starts, and that's the way you really get out of this depression. The way we did in the Eighties to be honest with you. View quote
Arthur Laffer
Governments are raising taxes for austerity and that doesn't work. Poor people cannot spend themselves into wealth and governments cannot tax their economies into prosperity. If you tax people who work, and pay people who don't work, don't be surprised if you find a lot of people not working... View quote
Arthur Laffer
It's not Republican, it's not Democrat. Honestly, it's not liberal, it's not conservative ... It's economics ... If you tax people who work and you pay people who don't work, don't be surprised when you get a lot of people not working. View quote
Arthur Laffer
As my former colleague Milton Friedman often said, ‘Government spending is taxation.' Beyond the essential services government provides - such as roads, courts, schools, police and fire services, and the military - government spending doesn't actually create resources. It just redistributes resources. For every beneficiary of government largesse, there's someone who pays for that largesse. View quote
Arthur Laffer
In the 1970s, the more Congress spent, the higher unemployment rose, and it was not until government spending and taxes were cut in the early 1980s that unemployment started its long-term decline. View quote
Arthur Laffer
You can't grow an economy, frankly, by over-taxing it. View quote
Arthur Laffer
I have never heard of an economy being taxed into prosperity. (Arthur Laffer)
It just isn't going to work, and it's very interesting that the man who invented this type of what I call a voodoo economic policy is Art Laffer, a California economist. View quote
Arthur Laffer