Saturday, April 07, 2007

How Supply-Side Economics Trickled Down


Bruce Bartlett, "present at the creation of “supply-side economics” back in the 1970s" claims that the phrase is being abused for political gains and should be retired. It is a "a frequently misleading and meaningless buzzword that gets in the way of good economic policy."

The Laffer curve, above, was one of the more contentious economic insights of the Reagan years, and has an interesting premise. Bartlett argues that what has happened is an abandonment of the principal in the pursuit of an agenda that was not intended.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I certainly learned something from this article, and it makes sense that there would be a tax rate that would produce a max. amount of revenue, and that this rate would be neither very high nor very low. Still, when you get to the point where a tax cut does not increase revenue, but instead decreases it, as it would once you were on the left side of the Laffer curve, wouldnt the increase in output and the economic growth still be good economic incentive for the cut, seeing that the gov't is looking out for the wellbeing of the entire country, not just gov't revenue gains.