“This assumes that we want the govt to get the most money it can. Only a population of willing slaves thinks that increasing govt revenue is a good thing.”
Exactly correct.
The further problem with this analysis is that it’s one-dimensional.
From a purely economic standpoint, government might be able to extract more money from us without discouraging productivity.
But a second dimesion is freedom. If we give zero dollars to the state, we have maximum freedom, at least in an economic sense. If we give all of our income to the state, we’re slaves. The curve relating those extremes does not rise, then fall like the Laffer curve, it moves only in one direction: greater tax rate, less freedom.
The government’s job should not be to maximize tax revenues, but to find the a balance which provides adequate funding while maximizing the personal economic freedom of the taxpayers.
But when you have a political party, an entrenched bureaucracy, and a compliant media which operates on the principal that everything belongs to government, and government needs to find the minimum it can let us keep, then personal economic freedom falls to the wayside.
The further problem with this analysis is that it’s one-dimensional.
Thank You. Thank You.
The reason this article, or Economics 101, even discusses the Laffer Curve is it is simple enough for the simple minded to believe they actually "understand" economics.
As many posters here have commented there are many many other factors in the creative, productive energy of a society; and taking the so-called Laffer curve as anything near a serious way to look at government intervention in that creative synergy, is an exercise out of the fourth grade. Which, as we are seeing, indicates about the level of understanding of most "economists."
Giving Barack Obama, and the people behind him, the most overly generous benefit of the doubt, the best that can be described for them is a sad inept bunch of academics, with no experience (or grace), but certainly with one hell of a bigoted agenda.
Wasn't Pol Pot a graduate of the Sorbonne?