![\"laffercurve\"](\"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/laffercurve.png\" "\\"laffercurve\\"")
<\/p>\nThe story (stories) of the old befuddled scared men and women crying out their Representatives, Senators, and President to “Keep the Government’s Hands off my Medicare!” is that tad too easy encapsulation for the advocates of Obama’s Health Care Reform, a sledge hammer that works largely to corrall the emotional out of the more legitimate concerns.\u00c2\u00a0 I do not know how to rate it in terms of propaganda versus\u00c2\u00a0a matter of clarifying a frame.<\/p>\n
But it is one thing for your befuddled octagenarian grandpa to worry about a government take-over of Medicare.\u00c2\u00a0 The man I don’t understand with this one is Arthur Laffer, that influential economist who, as that Creation Myth holds, doodled this on a napkin, thus heralding in the reign of Supply Side Economics.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And here is that napkin!<\/a><\/p>\n And now he adds these two cents\u00c2\u00a0to the current Health Care debate.:\u00c2\u00a0 “If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”<\/em><\/p>\n Huh<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Far be it for me to shake my head in wonderment at a economist, but… Huh.\u00c2\u00a0 Can he please scribble a graph of that on a napkin\u00c2\u00a0to clarify his position?<\/p>\n The Laffer Curve is, I have to admit, certainly true in extremis.\u00c2\u00a0 A zero percent tax rate will bring in no revenue, as would a 100 percent tax rate.\u00c2\u00a0 It gotes to figure that various rates of taxation should, therefor, be somewhere in between those two figures.\u00c2\u00a0 I suspect that there is no scientific answer to the “law”.<\/p>\n I have always admired\u00c2\u00a0Sean Hannity’s extrapulation of the principle.\u00c2\u00a0 “Every time you cut taxes, revenue doubles.”\u00c2\u00a0 It goes to figure that he should be, therefor, advocating a long series of two cent tax cuts — the $10 Trillion debt would be paid off in no time flat.\u00c2\u00a0 Except, I suppose, the “Starve the Beast” theory, which would require the government not to have too much room to grow.<\/p>\n It is worth musing over the (I would say undesirable idea) of a 100 percent top marginal rate.\u00c2\u00a0 I know it has been debated and discussed in the halls of various Green Party platform discussions, at least I assume it is as it is the quickest path to a “Maximum Wage” — and I know (from some listening to KBOO) that\u00c2\u00a0that socialist idea has been battered around in Green Party politics.\u00c2\u00a0 I also remember that the “Maximum Wage” was a great boogey-man for Rush Limbaugh (from my occasional listening back in the 1990s), the end of a slippery slope which would serve as the final sign that the “Great Experiment of America” is “Over”.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no real way to know if he believes that, since he never bothered to leave New York\u00c2\u00a0City<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for test case number one in the slippery slope.<\/p>\n But such a thing is a radical enough\u00c2\u00a0idea,\u00c2\u00a0fundamentally changing our country in ways that I think would justify and explain a chant of “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK” jumping to starting up a chorus of the “Star Spangled Banner”, and thus the successful shuttering of a Town Hall Meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 In the meantime, we’re stuck with too many knots in engaging a plan that would either modestly benefit or\u00c2\u00a0modestly\u00c2\u00a0hamper the country — I would\u00c2\u00a0go with “benefit”<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The story (stories) of the old befuddled scared men and women crying out their Representatives, Senators, and President to “Keep the Government’s Hands off my Medicare!” is that tad too easy encapsulation for the advocates of Obama’s Health Care Reform, a sledge hammer that works largely to corrall the emotional out of the more legitimate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4499,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496\/revisions\/4499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![And here is that napkin!<\/a><\/p>\nAnd now he adds these two cents\u00c2\u00a0to the current Health Care debate.:\u00c2\u00a0 “If you like the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”<\/em><\/p>\nHuh<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Far be it for me to shake my head in wonderment at a economist, but… Huh.\u00c2\u00a0 Can he please scribble a graph of that on a napkin\u00c2\u00a0to clarify his position?<\/p>\nThe Laffer Curve is, I have to admit, certainly true in extremis.\u00c2\u00a0 A zero percent tax rate will bring in no revenue, as would a 100 percent tax rate.\u00c2\u00a0 It gotes to figure that various rates of taxation should, therefor, be somewhere in between those two figures.\u00c2\u00a0 I suspect that there is no scientific answer to the “law”.<\/p>\nI have always admired\u00c2\u00a0Sean Hannity’s extrapulation of the principle.\u00c2\u00a0 “Every time you cut taxes, revenue doubles.”\u00c2\u00a0 It goes to figure that he should be, therefor, advocating a long series of two cent tax cuts — the $10 Trillion debt would be paid off in no time flat.\u00c2\u00a0 Except, I suppose, the “Starve the Beast” theory, which would require the government not to have too much room to grow.<\/p>\nIt is worth musing over the (I would say undesirable idea) of a 100 percent top marginal rate.\u00c2\u00a0 I know it has been debated and discussed in the halls of various Green Party platform discussions, at least I assume it is as it is the quickest path to a “Maximum Wage” — and I know (from some listening to KBOO) that\u00c2\u00a0that socialist idea has been battered around in Green Party politics.\u00c2\u00a0 I also remember that the “Maximum Wage” was a great boogey-man for Rush Limbaugh (from my occasional listening back in the 1990s), the end of a slippery slope which would serve as the final sign that the “Great Experiment of America” is “Over”.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no real way to know if he believes that, since he never bothered to leave New York\u00c2\u00a0City<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for test case number one in the slippery slope.<\/p>\nBut such a thing is a radical enough\u00c2\u00a0idea,\u00c2\u00a0fundamentally changing our country in ways that I think would justify and explain a chant of “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK” jumping to starting up a chorus of the “Star Spangled Banner”, and thus the successful shuttering of a Town Hall Meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 In the meantime, we’re stuck with too many knots in engaging a plan that would either modestly benefit or\u00c2\u00a0modestly\u00c2\u00a0hamper the country — I would\u00c2\u00a0go with “benefit”<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The story (stories) of the old befuddled scared men and women crying out their Representatives, Senators, and President to “Keep the Government’s Hands off my Medicare!” is that tad too easy encapsulation for the advocates of Obama’s Health Care Reform, a sledge hammer that works largely to corrall the emotional out of the more legitimate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4499,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4496\/revisions\/4499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/www.polyconomics.com\/gallery\/Napkin003.jpg\"){kind=link}