Arthur Laffer

“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.”

“The United States is a nation located in the global economy, and we get enormous, enormous benefits from dealing with foreigners.”

“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.”

“Sound money is the sine qua non of a prosperous society.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The story of how the Laffer Curve got its name begins with a 1978 article by Jude Wanniski in 'The Public Interest' entitled, 'Taxes, Revenues, and the Laffer Curve.'”

“Ask me whether inflation represents longer-term problem. I think there's a potential there for excess reserves to create problems.”

“Because tax cuts create an incentive to increase output, employment, and production, they also help balance the budget by reducing means-tested government expenditures. A faster-growing economy means lower unemployment and higher incomes, resulting in reduced unemployment benefits and other social welfare programs.”

“The states that have large in-migrations of Hispanics are Florida, Texas and California. And Florida and Texas are way above average in educational achievement, while California's the lowest, just about.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I feel very uncomfortable with respect to looking at inflation.”

“I've been truly blessed. I've been a fly on the wall of history. I've been just so many lucky places just by chance and serendipity, and obviously a huge portion of that serendipity had to do with my relationship with the real president, Ronald Reagan.”