58 Quotes by Arthur Laffer

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

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.

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.

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.

What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble.

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.

In 1994, Estonia became the first European country to adopt a flat tax, and its 26 percent flat tax dramatically energized what had been a faltering economy. Before adopting the flat tax, the Estonian economy was literally shrinking. In the eight years after 1994, Estonia experienced real economic growth - averaging 5.2 percent per year.

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.

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.