Arthur B. Laffer, et al., "The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen"

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

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Tags: EconomicPolicy, qPolitics, qHistory

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