Arthur Laffer vs. Milton Friedman
Side-by-side comparison of two thinkers
Arthur Laffer
1940 – present
Arthur Betz Laffer is an American economist and author who first gained prominence during the Ronald Reagan administration as a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–1989). Laffer is best known for the Laffer curve, an illustration of the hypothesis that there exists some tax rate between 0% and 100% that will result in maximum tax revenue for government. In certain circumstances, this would allow governments to cut taxes, and simultaneously increase revenue and economic growth.
"Both sides have a bad incentive. The people you tax, who do work, they are going to stop working. The people who learn to live getting income without working, t…"
Milton Friedman
1903 – 2006
Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. With George Stigler, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism before shifting their focus to new classical macroeconomics in the mid-1970s. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Nobel laureates Gary Becker (1992), Robert Fogel (1993), and Robert Lucas Jr. (1995).
"There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is …"
Connections
Both wrote about: