Tax rates aren’t everything with regard to incentives to work. I would probably work at a 100% tax rate next to a nude modeling studio. I’m joking, but you know what I’m saying. There’s a lot more to it than just tax rates. It’s economics that I do; I don’t do nude modeling studio economics. People do respond to taxes. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
Obama is a fine, very impressive person. He really is. Unfortunately, everything that he is doing in economics is exactly wrong. He is a crappy president. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
In 2010 the U.S. will have a payroll tax rate increase, an estate tax increase, and income tax increases. There’s also a tax increase coming in 2010 on carried interest. This rate will rise from its current level of 15 percent to 35 percent, and then it will rise again in 2011. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
The linkage between tax rates and public services is, if not non-existent, negative. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
What you do by having an income tax rate reduction across the board, you really provide great incentives for people to work, produce, and increase output. So I would support a carbon tax in replacement for a progressive income tax. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
I’m worried about economic growth in the United States. And the creation of jobs, output, and employment. And if you tax people who work, you’re going to get less people working. And what the carbon tax would do is remove the tax from people who work and put it on a product in the ground. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
A carbon tax by itself would make driving more expensive, that’s very true. But in exchange for that, there are going to be more jobs, more output, more employment, and more products available. So really, as long as you’re going to collect the revenues you’re going to collect, you’re going to have to trade off one tax for the other. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
When you look at the government, when the government collects a buck, it’s not free. They have to spend resources, the IRS, audits, all this sort of crap, to collect the dollar. I’m not assuming any Laffer curve effect here at all. There are just transactions costs of collecting that money. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
Raising taxes is not a frivolous venture that you do on the editorial page of ‘The New Republic,’ for god sakes. It’s something that you really have to think about and go through carefully. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
Taxes are not trivial – they’re a huge portion of this overall economy. And that’s why I focused on them. Arthur Laffer Read Quote
