Arthur Laffer Quotes

Governments are raising taxes for austerity and that doesn’t work. Poor people cannot spend themselves into wealth and governments cannot tax their economies into prosperity. If you tax people who work, and pay people who don’t work, don’t be surprised if you find a lot of people not working…

The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me.

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.

People do not work, consume, or invest to pay taxes. They work and invest to earn after-tax income, and they consume to get the best buys after tax. Therefore, people are not concerned per se with taxes, but with after-tax results. Taxes and after-tax results are very similar, but have crucial differences.

California is the highest-tax state in the nation and has been for a long time. It has the highest paid teachers in the nation, by far — $400 a month more than New Jersey — and yet California is the third lowest state on test scores for fourth and eighth grade English and math in the nation, and has been at the low level for a long, long time.

Whoever heard of a poor man spending himself into wealth? It’s dumb. But we try stimulus spending all of the time.

Economic freedom is extraordinarily important. It’s the freedom to do with your resources what you believe you should do. My dream has always been to make poor people rich, not rich people poor.

The notion of a Keynesian spending multiplier is right out of an Aesop fable. And who ever heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity? No one!

Both sides have a bad incentive. The people you tax, who do work, they are going to stop working. The people who learn to live getting income without working, they are going to work less too.

In the 1990's, we had the largest cut in government spending as a share of GDP in the history of the U.S. In the 1990's, we were doing free trade, we passed NAFTA, we went through there. We were for lowering interest rates and controlling money far better. And we weren't regulating nearly as much. We had welfare reform and all of those wonderful things. We had the biggest tax cut in our nation's history. Any comparison between today and the 1990's, it's totally inappropriate. Bill Clinton, as bad a person as he was, was a good president.

Rise the minimum wage is the best way of hurting the poor.

In 1994, Estonia became the first European country to adopt a flat tax, and its 26 percent flat tax dramatically energized what had been a faltering economy. Before adopting the flat tax, the Estonian economy was literally shrinking. In the eight years after 1994, Estonia experienced real economic growth - averaging 5.2 percent per year.

Stimulus packages don’t work. Every president that I have ever heard of has wanted a free lunch. They just don’t get it.

It's not Republican, it's not Democrat. Honestly, it's not liberal, it's not conservative ... It's economics … If you tax people who work and you pay people who don't work, don't be surprised when you get a lot of people not working.

I have never heard of an economy being taxed into prosperity.