32+ Arthur Laffer Quotes On Education, Government And Capitalism

Arthur Laffer is an American economist who is most famous for his Laffer Curve, which suggests that there is a relationship between tax rates and the amount of tax revenue collected by governments. He is a supply-side economist who believes that lower taxes can increase economic growth and job creation. He is a former member of President Ronald Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Arthur Laffer on education, government, capitalism.

Top 10 Arthur Laffer Quotes

1. Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.
2. 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.
3. It is not true that Congress spends money like a drunken sailor. Drunken sailors spend their own money. Congress spends our money.
4. And you can't have a prosperous economy when the government is way overspending, raising tax rates, printing too much money, over regulating and restricting free trade. It just can't be done.
5. The tax rate increases reduce economic growth; they shrink the pie; they cause more poverty, more despair, more unemployment, which are all things government is trying to alleviate with spending.
6. You know, without China there is no Wal-Mart and without Wal-Mart there is no middle class and lower class prosperity in the United States.
7. People can also change the timing of when they earn and receive their income in response to government policies.
8. 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.
9. You want to prove that Milton Friedman is a fascist? It's easy. Quote him.
10. With the shrinking of the US economy, and it's shrinking very rapidly, you not only have more money, but you also have fewer goods. That's a classic double-whammy on inflation.

Arthur Laffer Quotes About Government

There are lots of other things that affect state growth besides state taxes. However, the reason I look at taxes is because these are policy variables that can be changed by state governments in order to get better results than they otherwise had. — Arthur Laffer

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies. — Arthur Laffer

I mean, everyone agrees with stress tests for banks. I mean that's clear. But banks should do that on their own. And they should worry about their own capital functioning. That's what they should do. It shouldn't be a government function. — Arthur Laffer

If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government. — Arthur Laffer

Arthur Laffer Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Arthur Laffer

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. — Arthur Laffer

Let me just try to give you sort of the intuitive one here on the stimulus funds. If you have a two-person economy - let's imagine we have two farms, and that's the whole world, just two farms. If one of those farmers gets unemployment benefits, who do you think pays for him? Am I going way over your heads today? — Arthur Laffer

The income effects in an economy always sum to zero. — Arthur Laffer

There are several states that move from Karl Marx-like policies to Adam Smith-like policies and back again in a weekend. So for the states with huge volatility in their income tax policies over time, the differences in growth rates in those periods are really amazingly consistent with tax rates really mattering. — Arthur Laffer

If you look at the performance of the zero-income-tax-rate states and the highest-income-tax-rate states, I believe a large amount of their difference is due to taxes. Not only is it true of the last decade, but I took these numbers back 50 years. And, there's not one year in the last 50 where the zero-income-tax-rate states have not outperformed the highest-income-tax-rate states. — Arthur Laffer

Which would you rather have, capital lined up on your borders, trying to get into your country or trying to get out of your country? We are the capital magnet of this planet and we are the savior for not only people, for not only freedom, but also for capital. — Arthur Laffer

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

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. — Arthur Laffer

I think the inflation prospects for the U.S. over the next five or six, seven years, are quite serious. You cannot have a bumper crop in apples without the value or the price of each apple falling. The Fed has had the largest increase in the monetary base in the history of the U.S., from colonial times to the present, times ten. — Arthur Laffer

And let the Fed sell bonds to bring bank reserves back down to required reserve levels, so we have restraint on bank lending and bank issuances of liability. — Arthur Laffer

When you look at the world, everyone in the world who cares about his or her family wants to have a major portion of their assets in the United States because we are the growth country and the freedom loving country. — Arthur Laffer

Let's take the nine states that have no income tax and compare them with the nine states with the highest income tax rates in the nation. If you look at the economic metrics over the last decade for both groups, the zero-income-tax-rate states outperform the highest-income-tax-rate states by a fairly sizable amount. — Arthur Laffer

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. — Arthur Laffer

What we're talking about is the price of goods, all goods, in terms of money. That has nothing to do with unemployment, except for the fact that you get fewer goods. And when you have more money and fewer goods, the amount of dollars per good goes up. It goes up because there are fewer goods and it goes up because there is more money. — Arthur Laffer

Sound money is the sine qua non of a prosperous society. — Arthur Laffer

The zero-income-tax-rate states have far faster growth in tax revenues than did the states with highest income tax rate over this period. — Arthur Laffer

There are 11 states in the United States that in the last 50 years instituted an income tax. So I looked at each of those 11 states over the last 50 years, and I took their current economic metrics and their metrics for the five years before they put in the progressive income tax... Every single state that introduced a progressive income tax has declined as an overall share of the U.S. economy. — Arthur Laffer

Life Lessons by Arthur Laffer

1. Arthur Laffer's work has highlighted the importance of tax incentives for economic growth, demonstrating that lower taxes can lead to increased investment and higher levels of productivity.
2. His work has also shown that excessively high taxes can lead to a decrease in economic activity, as people are less likely to invest and work hard when the rewards are too low.
3. Arthur Laffer's work has demonstrated the importance of finding the right balance between taxation and economic growth, as too much or too little taxation can both be damaging to an economy.