Tuesday, February 26, 2008

CFP's Laffer Curve Video

CFP's Laffer Curve Video

Law Professor Linda Beale debunks the latest Laffer Curve propaganda video from the "Center for Freedom and Prosperity" and CATO's Dan Mitchell.

Added to the CATO and Taxation indexes.

4 comments:

Malcolm Kirkpatrick said...

The article is just silly.

First: She misconstrues the Laffer curve (and why "so-called" Laffer curve?); it's not "bell-shaped", it's parabolic. There's a zero at both extremes.

Second: The Kennedy-Johnson-era economist Charles Schultz called the Laffer curve a straight-foreward consequence of standard economic analysis (Harvard Magazine).

Third:...well, I quit at this point.

Mike Huben said...

Malcolm, if you had read two paragraphs further, she discusses the zeros at the extremes. Perhaps you shouldn't accuse people of misconstruing things if you're the one misconstruing.

As a model, the Laffer curve is "a straight-foreward consequence of standard economic analysis". But does that model actually resemble the real world? And even if it does, even if it is really parabolic (instead of some different shape) are we on the left or right side of the maximum? That's what Beale is questioning, and the answer is that we have little reason to believe anything that the CFP tells us.

Malcolm Kirkpatrick said...

"if you had read two paragraphs further"...

How far did you get into Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision"?

Mike Huben said...

I read far enough into it to be able to criticize it intelligently, and be sure I wasn't mischaracterizing him.

You should try that some day, instead of mere smirking.