laughs so what's wrong with the laffer curve? let's start with a fundamental premise. the government is not a corporation whose purpose is to make a profit. its purpose is to take care of things that are in our collective best interest but not necessarily in our individual best interest. its purpose is build stuff that can be shared by all. like roads, power lines, schools, research, tanks, etc. obviously we have to pay for this stuff. the trick is to figure out how to do it fairly. which is quite subjective. but generally i think we'd agree it makes sense to ask more from those that have more. and less from those who have less.

if the tax rate was 0% the government would have to operate solely on donations. i know i'd donate quite a bit to education and research. the government's revenues would be more than 0%. laffer's wrong.

if the tax rate was 100% no one would work. heh. russians in the former soviet union worked even though the tax rate was 100% i might remind you the ussr had enough revenue to compete with us in a very expensive arms race. again laffer's wrong.

even if everything else about the laffer rainbow was right, you'd still have to show that the current tax rate is too high.

revenues are one side of the ledger. the government's revenues go up at the expense of the individual's. though not necessarily one-to-one. in a fair world the government has to replace the services the individual used to be able to afford on their own. ie the government's "profit" goes down. ie the government can afford less of the stuff that grows the economy. ignoring government expenditures is a huge flaw in the laffer curve.

taxes are complex. there is no single tax rate. to calculate revenue you have to convolve the tax rate curve with the income distribution curve. simplification is generally a good thing. but can obscure the details. which in this case are critical to the conclusion. when you do more of the math details than simply rate times income the benefits of the laffer curve vanish like a swindler into the night.  ¶ 8:00 AM