Title : WANT PROOF THAT TRUMP KNOWS ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING ABOUT ECONOMICS?
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WANT PROOF THAT TRUMP KNOWS ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING ABOUT ECONOMICS?
FATHER OF TAX CUT THEORY IS GIVEN MEDAL OF FREEDOM
By: Jim Tankersley
The New York Times
20 June 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump bestowed the nation’s highest civilian honor on the conservative economist Arthur Laffer on Wednesday, praising him for policies that he said brought “greater opportunity for all Americans.”
Mr. Laffer is the father of so-called supply-side economics, and is the namesake of a famed theory — the Laffer Curve — which posits that reducing certain tax rates can actually increase government tax revenues by accelerating economic growth. He helped write Mr. Trump’s campaign tax plan and has advised the president on economic policy. He is also the mentor of Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House National Economic Council.
Mr. Laffer’s relentless and sunny advocacy of tax cuts, deregulation and free trade have influenced decades of Republican policy proposals, most famously under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Democrats have criticized him for repeatedly promising that tax cuts would deliver growth and revenues that did not appear, such as damaging state tax cuts in Kansas that produced a large shortfall in the state budget and prompted the Republican-controlled Legislature to ultimately reverse them.In a ceremony in the Oval Office, with Mr. Laffer’s six children in attendance, Mr. Trump said, “I’ve heard and studied the Laffer Curve for many years.” He called the theory, which Mr. Laffer famously sketched on a cocktail napkin in the 1970s for Donald H. Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, then Republican policy hands, “a very important thing you did, Art.”
“Few people in history have revolutionized economic theory like Arthur Laffer,” Mr. Trump said.
“Academics called his theory insanity, totally wacky and completely off the wall,” he said. “With optimism, confidence and exceptional intellect, Art would go on to prove them all wrong on a number of occasions.”
Mr. Trump also took the occasion to praise the performance of the United States economy, including unexpectedly strong growth figures for the first quarter of this year, which economists expect to slow in the quarters to come. “Our economy has never, ever been stronger than it is today,” he said.Mr. Laffer is an author of a fawning book about Mr. Trump’s economic policies, “Trumponomics.” That book was written with Stephen Moore, another Trump adviser and Laffer disciple, whom Mr. Trump said he would nominate to the Federal Reserve board this year but who withdrew from contention after Republican senators raised objections.
Mr. Laffer, Mr. Moore and Mr. Kudlow pushed Mr. Trump early in his 2016 presidential run to propose large tax cuts, for individuals and corporations, saying they would fuel a sharp acceleration in economic growth, to above 4 or 5 percent a year.
Mr. Trump did usher through a giant $1.5 trillion package of cuts in 2017, which helped spur about 3 percent economic growth in 2018. But the cuts did not generate more federal tax revenues and have instead contributed to a widening budget deficit that is on pace to top $1 trillion this year.
Mr. Laffer’s award ceremony was attended by several of his longtime allies in the decades-long push for tax cuts at all levels of government, including Mr. Moore; a former presidential candidate, Steve Forbes; and Mr. Kudlow, who championed to Mr. Trump the idea of awarding Mr. Laffer the medal. When Mr. Trump praised supply-side economic policies, Mr. Kudlow let out a low “yee-haw.”
Accepting the award, Mr. Laffer praised a wide range of economists and politicians who advocated tax cuts, including Mr. Cheney; the economist Milton Friedman; former Representative Jack Kemp; Presidents Reagan and John F. Kennedy; and Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Britain — along with Mr. Trump.He also praised his family.
“And all I can say is wow,” Mr. Laffer said.
NOTE: In another spectacular example of Trump not understanding the meaning of the term "irony," awarding the Medal of Freedom to Arthur Laffer raises the irony level to stratospheric heights. Arthur Laffer, an economic advisor during the Reagan Administration and inventor of the Laffer Curve (not worth the napkin and later chip board it was illustrated on) has served as the foundation of U.S. economic policy for decades now. The short description of Laffer's economic theory is that cutting taxes will unleash untold economic activity all across America's sectors thereby increasing government tax revenues. It has done no such thing.
The reality of Arthur Laffer's "theory" is that it has resulted in stagnant incomes for America's working and middle classes, the enrichment of the wealthy, the draining of Federal coffers of tax dollars, and basically relegated any other economic theories to the trash bin. There is probably no single economic policy over the past 40 years that has so damaged ordinary Americans economically. If you think of one, let me know.
All the cries for more socialism - Bernie's Democratic Socialism included - in the run-up to 2020, have come about not by accident or a political whim, they have arisen because America's working and middle classes have actually suffered from U.S. economic policy during the past three or four decades. I cautioned that back in 2016 that I was pretty certain that any form of socialism like that promoted by Bernie Sanders, would be a sure fire failure for Democrats. "Socialism," I wrote, brings up images of Stalin and Lenin and maybe even Hitler just because of the name of Hitler's political party, National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Maybe not so much today. But I'm still pretty certain that "more socialism" as a compelling battle cry is not going to win over the swing voters Democrats need in 2020.
All the cries for more socialism - Bernie's Democratic Socialism included - in the run-up to 2020, have come about not by accident or a political whim, they have arisen because America's working and middle classes have actually suffered from U.S. economic policy during the past three or four decades. I cautioned that back in 2016 that I was pretty certain that any form of socialism like that promoted by Bernie Sanders, would be a sure fire failure for Democrats. "Socialism," I wrote, brings up images of Stalin and Lenin and maybe even Hitler just because of the name of Hitler's political party, National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Maybe not so much today. But I'm still pretty certain that "more socialism" as a compelling battle cry is not going to win over the swing voters Democrats need in 2020.
But here's what Trump, in his total ignorance of economics, said: "Few people in history have revolutionized economic theory like Arthur Laffer." Trump is not wrong, but I'm assuming that given the award of the Medal of Freedom" Trump believes that Laffer's contribution to the U.S. economy is a positive one rather than the reality that it is one of the most destructive economic policies in American history.
Have A Good Day!
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