 |
The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, Peter Tanous
- Publisher: Threshold Editions
- Number Of Pages: 352
- Publication Date: 2008-10-14
- ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1416592385
- ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781416592389
Arthur Laffer—the father of supply-side economics and a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board—joins economist Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and investment advisor Peter J. Tanous to send Americans an urgent message: We risk losing the exceptional standard of living that has made us the envy of the rest of the world if the pro-growth policies of the last twenty-five years are reversed by a new president.
Since the early 1980s, the United States has experienced a wave of prosperity almost unprecedented in history in terms of wealth creation, new jobs, and improved living standards for all. Under the leadership of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Americans changed the incentive structure on taxes, inflation, and regulation, and as a result the economy roared back to life after the anti-growth, high-inflation 1970s.
Now the rest of the world is following the American economic growth model of lower tax rates, more economic freedom, and sound money. Paradoxically, one country is moving away from these growth policies and putting its prosperity at risk—America.
On the eve of a critical presidential election, Laffer, Moore, and Tanous provide the factual information every American needs in order to understand exactly how we achieved the prosperity many people have come to take for granted, and explain how the policies of Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi can cause America to lose its status as the world's growth and job creation machine.
The End of Prosperity is essential reading for all Americans who value our nation's free enterprise system and high standard of living, and want to know how to protect their own investments in the coming storm.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Forward: Prosperity in the Balance by Larry Kudlow
1 The Gathering Economic Storm
America: What Went Right
Movin' On Up
Don't Know Much About History
The Four Killers of Prosperity
Which Brings Us to Today
The Imminent Economic Danger
Is There a 50 Percent Tax "Baracket" in Your Future?
Fair Trade Means No Trade
2 How a Cocktail Napkin Changed the World: The Laffer Curve
What the Cocktail Napkin Taught Us
Mick Jagger: Supply-Sider
The Logic of the Laffer Curve
Laffer Curve Lessons
Principle 1. When you tax something you get less of it and when you tax something less, you get more of it
Principle 2. The best tax system helps make poor people rich, not rich people poor
Principle 4. If tax rates get too high, they may lead to a reduction in tax receipts—as demonstrated by the Laffer Curve
Principle 5. An efficient tax system has a broad tax base and a low tax rate
Principle 6. People, businesses, and capital move from high-tax to low-tax areas
Is There a Laffer Curve Effect from Taxing Beer?
Supply-Side Economics 101
Uncle Sam Versus the Laffer Curve
Onslaught from the Left
"Trickle Down" Economics
3 "We Can Do Bettah": Tax-Cutting Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Whither the JFK Democrats
Laffer Curve History Lessons
Harding-Coolidge Tax Cuts
Crash!
The Kennedy Tax Cuts
The Age of Affluence
4 Honey, We Shrunk the Economy: The Awful 1970s
The Destructive Legacy of LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerry Ford, and Jimmy Carter
The Four Stooges of the American Presidency
LBJ and the Great Society
The Nixon Years
Whip Inflation Now
The Carter Catastrophe
Washington Creates an Energy Crisis
Carter's Inflation
Losing the Cold War
Carter's Malaise
The Misery President
5 The Twenty-Five-Year Boom: The Reagan Economic Revolution
Reagan's Riverboat Gamble
Stay the Course
What Was Reaganomics?
The Kemp-Roth Tax Cut
Taming the Hydra-Headed Monster of Inflation
The Plunge in Interest Rates
Get Government Off Our Backs
The Regulatory Octopus
Tear Down These Trade Walls
A Decade of Greed or Grandeur?
The Reagan Bull Market
Prosperity Rediscovered
What War on the Middle Class?
The Great American Jobs Machine
We're in the Money
Myth: Decade of Greed
Myth: Trickle Down Economics
Myth: The Era of Debt and Deficits
Myth: The Rich Got Richer and the Poor Got Poorer
6 What Bill Clinton Could Teach Barack Obama
Read My Lips
Crime of the Century
It's the Economy, Stupid
What Bill Clinton Got Right
The End of Welfare as We Know It
7 How George W Bush Soaked the Rich
Bush Turns to the Supply Side
Lower Tax Rates, More Revenue
Drunken Sailor Spending
8 Bankruptcy 90210: As Goes California, So Goes the Nation
The Tax Revolt Heard Round the World
The Reverse California Gold Rush
Moving Up and Moving Out
Growth States of the Future
Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend
Hasta La Vista, Baby
9 Socialism, Non, the Laffer Curve, Oui: Supply-Side Economics Takes the World by Storm
Flat and Happy
The Globe Tilts to the Supply Side
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't All Be Wrong
The "Irish Miracle"
The Laffer Curve Goes Global
Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise—Is There a Tradeoff?
10 How to Create a Bull Market: The Capital Gains Tax Validates the Laffer Curve
Capital Equals Jobs and Higher Wages
What History Teaches Us
President Bush's Vindication
What's the Fairest Tax Cut of Them All?
Ending Capital Punishment
11 Throw Momma from the Train: The Unfair Estate Tax
A Death Tax Tragedy Is Coming in 2010
Taxes Everlasting
12 Protectionism Then and Now: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930
Smoot-Hawley: The Killer Tariff
Did It Cause the Great Depression?
The Poverty of Closed Borders
A Tale of Two States
The South Carolina Resurgence
The Dreaded Trade Deficit
The Outsourcing Boogeyman
Closed Minds and Closed Borders
13 Many Happy Returns: The Flat Tax Solution
The Supply-Side Version of Robin Hood
How to Fix the Tax System Once and for All
Why Do Governments Impose Taxes on Citizens?
The Income Tax Monstrosity
Flat Means Fair
All Aboard the Flat Tax Express
The Laffer Flat Tax
Flat and Happy
How Will It Work?
What Is the Flat Tax Rate?
Flat Tax Versus Fair Tax
Why a Flat Tax Works
Appendix: The Flat Tax Math
14 The Death of Economic Sanity
The America Sell-Off
November 4, 2008: Fright Night
Onslaught from the Left
Tax the Rich
Tax the Middle Class
Red Tape Rising
Unfree Trade
The Incredible Sinking Dollar
Big Labor's Big Comeback
Let's Spend Again
Here Comes Hillary Care
Running on Empty
Cap and Kill—The Economy
Return of the Nativists
A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall
15 Protecting Your Investments in the Troubled Times Ahead
How Do We Build a Portfolio for the Ages?
A Typical Well-Balanced Portfolio
Domestic Stocks
International Stocks
Fixed Income
How Many Stocks and Bonds Should You Choose?
How to Invest in These Different Asset Classes
Other Investments
Beating Inflation—Tips
Gold