Howard Kveck said:In article <[email hidden]>,
SLAVE of THE STATE <[email hidden]> wrote:
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:The Laffer curve has to exist a priori ...
Well, the Laffer Curve is (and has been) something of a holy grail to supply-side
adherents but it hasn't been shown yet to actually exist in real life.
It isn't a holy grail. People use the idea as a subtle argument keep
the tax rate down, even if it the argument is technically wrong for a
given economy at some given time. It really isn't that big of a deal
as it is a fairly straightforward and simple concept.
It is actually at the extremes where the concept becomes more dubious,
not the middling regions. (By that I mean it really is questionable
if you can call the theoretical "societies" and "economies" at the
theoretical extremes "the same ones" as "the middling ones." "The
same ones" is so incredibly subjective, and the character differences
at the extremes must be so very great. So if the general concept has
a problem, that is where is lies, not criticism in the manner tax hogs
project.)
In more practical terms it must exist a priori. The reason it can't
actually be empirically well demonstrated is because "society" and
"the economy" isn't a toy model/experiment you can twiddle to get a
satisfactory set of data on. A starting problem is "the economy" is a
very loose and vague fiction. I'm not saying the terminology can't be
useful, it can, but be careful. You can't ceteris paribus a "society"
or an "economy" while doing your Laffer test tweeks.
Why do you think all of them are drawing lines on top of lame data?
They don't have good data -- so they resort to lameness. The reason
you have problems with it is it has been cartoonized and politicized.
It really isn't that big of a deal. Both sides are riddled with smoke
and mirror presentation. It is [censored].
All of this is irrelevent, as neither side really bothers to drive to
answering the hard question of why any tax should be at any particular
level.
"It's the spending stupid." --BF, 1759
