Saturday, January 14, 2012

The Death Threats Made Against Arthur Laffer

Arthur Laffer, promoter of the Laffer Curve, shouldn't be considered a total free market, libertarian economist. He is in favor of lower taxes, but generally only because he sees lower taxes as a more efficient way for governments to raise revenues.

That said, at the end of this interview he states that he received death threats for his call for tax cuts for the rich and that someone actually killed his animals.

I'm not completely sure what the lesson is here. Perhaps that there are many that believe the rich should be taxed aggressively, without making the important distinction between elitists who have become wealthy because they used the state to their advantage, and those are wealthy by creating products that consumers desire.


Watch The Strange, Animal-Killing Side Effects of Tax Policy Changes on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

6 comments:

  1. The left are so stupid. They actually think the "government" is the economy, rather than a pernicious parasite that destroys it.

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  2. Sorry, but Laffer has no credibility since I saw him in the interview with Peter Schiff. Go find the interview then tell me that this guy has any understanding of economics. Oh wait I forgot......no one saw the housing bubble bursting. My bad.

    Craig

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  3. Credibility or not, I don't think he deserved to have his animals killed and death threats on his life, especially just for saying the rich shouldn't have higher taxes... America is full of shit

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  4. >I'm not completely sure what the lesson is here.

    The lesson is that there is no shortage of hardcore leftist idiots who believe that "the rich" should not only be "aggressivly taxed" but rather shot in a ditch soviet-style.
    The same people also think that even mainstream "free market" economists like Laffer are insufficiently statist and are in fact part of a crypto anarcho-capitalist conspiracy to destroy social democracy (which is the only thing protecting us from CORPORATE WARLORD RAPE GANGS derp derp)

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  5. Not a fan of Mr. Laffer, but he certainly does not deserve these types of threats.

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  6. I am reminded of a joke I heard in 1986. This is back in the good old days when the Soviets were the Implacable Enemy With Whom No Compromise Was Possible, and the mujahideen were freedom fighters armed and funded by the U.S., to thwart that Implacable Enemy.

    A Brit, a Frenchman and a Russian stumble into a lantern. They rub it. Sure enough, a genie appears. The genie offers to make one wish come true for each of them.

    The Brit says, "I want a million pounds of cash, a fish and chips franchise, and a castle in the Scottish Highlands."

    The Frenchman says, "I want a kilogram of gold, a chateau on the Riviera, and a beautiful French mistress."

    The Russian says, "My neighbor Sergei has a goat. I haven't got a goat. Kill my neighbor's goat."

    That's the politics of envy for you. Like Puritans resenting others' having a good time, the leveler chafes at others' wealth, no matter how attained.

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