In a message dated 12/5/02 10:04:34 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< As a historical note abou the Laffer curve, it's interesting to see that
the phenomenon was already described by Bastiat in his 1847-02-21 article
"Curieux ph�nom�ne �conomique" (a peculiar economical phenomenon), itself
inspired from actual experience gathered in Great Britain before that time.
http://bastiat.org/fr/cpe.html
The phenomenon is also discussed in his latter essay
"Paix et libert�" ou "le budget r�publicain" (not yet digitized,
but available as scanned photos of the original french text).
Re-reading his Economic Harmonies (the whole of which are available in
English from econlib.org), I can but marvel at how he was more than just
a precursor of von Mises -- he did have a deeper and clearer understanding
of economic mechanisms than is even possible nowadays, with so ma >>
For that matter Alexander Hamilton makes a supply-side argument in The
Federalist, some 60 years before Bastiat, when he talks about how exise taxes
tend to be self-limiting: if you make the rate too high, you get less
revenue. The man known as "the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since
Alexander Hamilton," Andrew Mellon, also used supply-side rational in arguing
for his tax cut package, which resembled Reagan's initial proposals in a
large number of ways. In the book Mellon wrote pushing his tax cut proposal,
Mellon quoted Adam Smith, so I believe there's something in Wealth of Nations
that uses supply-side rational.
David Levenstam
