The End of Prosperity

How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy--If We Let It Happen

Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, Peter Tanous

• Publisher: Threshold Editions
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781416592396
• eBook ISBN: 9781439100929
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Taxation
• Index: Economics

Arthur Laffer -- the father of supply-side economics and a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board -- joins economist Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal editorial board and investment advisor Peter J. Tanous to send Americans an urgent message: We risk losing the exceptional standard of living that has made us the envy of the rest of the world if the pro-growth policies of the last twenty-five years are reversed by a new president. Since the early 1980s, the United States has experienced a wave of prosperity almost unprecedented in history in terms of wealth creation, new jobs, and improved living standards for all. Under the leadership of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Americans changed the incentive structure on taxes, inflation, and regulation, and as a result the economy roared back to life after the anti-growth, high-inflation 1970s. Now the rest of the world is following the American economic growth model of lower tax rates, more economic freedom, and sound money. Paradoxically, one country is moving away from these growth policies and putting its prosperity at risk -- America. On the eve of a critical presidential election, Laffer, Moore, and Tanous provide the factual information every American needs in order to understand exactly how we achieved the prosperity many people have come to take for granted, and explain how the policies of Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi can cause America to lose its status as the world's growth and job creation machine. The End of Prosperity is essential reading for all Americans who value our nation's free enterprise system and high standard of living, and want to know how to protect their own investments in the coming storm.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• The Second Coming
• Preface
• Foreword
• 1. The Gathering Economic Storm
• 2. How a Cocktail Napkin Changed the World: The Laffer Curve
• 3. “We Can Do Bettah”: Tax-Cutting Lessons from the Twentieth Century
• 4. Honey, We Shrunk the Economy: The Awful 1970s
• 5. The Twenty-Five-Year Boom: The Reagan Economic Revolution
• 6. What Bill Clinton Could Teach Barack Obama
• 7. How George W. Bush Soaked the Rich
• 8. Bankruptcy 90210: As Goes California, So Goes the Nation
• 9. Socialism, Non, the Laffer Curve, Oui: Supply-Side Economics Takes the World by Storm
• 10. How to Create a Bull Market: The Capital Gains Tax Validates the Laffer Curve
• 11. Throw Momma from the Train: The Unfair Estate Tax
• 12. Protectionism Then and Now: The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930
• 13. Many Happy Returns: The Flat Tax Solution
• 14. The Death of Economic Sanity
• 15. Protecting Your Investments in the Troubled Times Ahead
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index