An excellent lecture by Arthur Laffer (The inventor of the laffer curve) - Prosperity through growth.

 Prosperity through growth:

A brilliant talk. Absolutely amazing. Having never really seen much of a pro-free market perspective of macroeconomics at school, this was a refreshing lovely new perspective. Undoubtly Dr Laffer is an amazing speaker, but there were also moments that I simply also didnt agree with. For instance, his view that central banks should not be operationally independent didnt really make sense. IMO central banks should be operationally independent so that they can make MP decisions based on economic conditions rather than political pressures. Independence then helps maintain price stability, credibility, and long-term economic stability...  His ideas about how amazing trump really is were also prone to scepticism. Often saying his policy's are prone to data and "numbers" which didnt really coincide with what I thought about his tariff calculation a couple months ago. However, nonetheless it was a really good talk and below are my notes.

Primary focus on Market oriented growth based policies:

Dr Laffer- Keynote speech

• Advised thatcher and thatcher
• Main points of macro economics
• tax- all are bad but some are worse than others. You want a policy that does the least damage policy but the most to bring funds to government. Lowest rate but greatest base to reduce amount of tax evasions and offsets. Reduce avoidance- the north star of tax. Low rate of tax
• government spending- government so much better at some things than private can do. You also want the last dollar spending and the last dollar collected to gain the greatest amount of optimum efficiency. Hence a spending restraint.
• MP- you want price stability so that you can have a long idea of the economy for growth; “sound money”. 1920- government defined what the prize of gold and other goods were. Prior to 1919- government would audit bank something. And then nationalisation of money. Gold was criminalised. Nationalised money vs to privatised money. From 1776- the value of money stayed stable. Created a long term terffic market. There was then the great depression, price levels were just too low. Hence sound MP is great
• regulatory policy- you want to ensure that the regulation to not be intrusive for growth. 
• trade- free trade. Uk and holland funded us trade for a while. This created huge amounts of growth. Nixon 10% surcharge created huge damage. Bob something talked about how tariff caused great depression and the great depression created ww2.

His focus on taxation:

1. Income is distributed unequally.
2. Transfer theorem
3. When you transfer, you reduce the among of product produced. Take away from those who have more, you reduce incentives to increase production and if you give to those that have a bit less, they too have less incentives to increase production. 
4. Seltsly equation- Will need to research this for another blog post sometime soon
5. The more the redistribution, the greater the 
6. There is a limit function to this theory. If you are able to redistribute income so that everyone came up the same, you would have 0 income. The only way to completely reduce income inequality means that you have to make everyone have 0 income. Everyone is equally poor. 
7. Every time they raise taxes on highest earners. The economy underperforms, tax revenue from the rich go down. The poor also do bad, 
8. Every time you do the opposite, the opposite happens. 

Matthew elliot:

• Oversaw 2 national campaigns
• Co author of prosperity through growth
• Biggest enemy of supply side economics peronism. they want social justice," "economic independence," and "political sovereignty. This is an argentinian story.
• Does legalisation move us towards to the north star? Marginal rate tax taken down from 76 to …. Taking down tax rates under ronald reagan.
• Tariffs are quite hard to get back in the day to place which is hard to compare to the modern day
• Leverage- there are no winners in a trade war but all losers don’t loose the same amount. Gave an example of if just us and peru had a trade war and they were perfectly in place. They would hurt their country if the put reciprocal tariffs. Hence if America scared them, then they can bully their way into getting a better power. USMCA, The agreement with japan.Trump is using this as a negotion tool?? 
• Have a big defence budget so you don’t have to use it. Kennedy said that you need to have a huge defence budget to ensure that people fear you. 
• We tax people so they stop smoking. We tax people to get people to stop speeding and then why do we stop people that earn income?
• Reasons for low growth post GFC. BRXIT, energy through Russia and ukraine. Politicians didn’t really have a plan. Increased uncertainty. Defended Brexit, look at the economic growth of the western countries, Uk had grown faster. Uk is now trading more with the EU. We adopted a european style post brexit, which increased beurocaxy. 
• Lowering tax was done in the 1980s where growth shot ip and growth was closer to the north star. Liz trust didn’t really have a full plan . But she never put in a tax cut.
• The stuff with pensioners is going up? Is this damaging to us. How can we create space for tax cuts, given tight fiscal room. 
• Everyone puts themselves for the lottery, they all want to be rich, then why tax the rich 😭😭😭
• No american is made richer bu making another person poorer.
• A rising tied raised all boats
• Talked about poverty traps with Pensilvenia. You should also create enterprise zones.Are there any economic models to help the poorest of the people. Best form of welfare is through a high paying job. You don’t want to reduce incentives
• Advice to government where GS might help economy. Don’t increase tax and spending. You need to make it clear that employers national insurance going up decreases number of employers. Requires a free market approach. Social security- people’s longevity increase which means that retirement age increases so increased burden on the economy. 
• Should we have an independent central bank?

Why does so much of what they explain have been lost over time to explain from politicians?

1. Many believe politicians are too short term
2. Sometimes what the public opinion is the north star. Long term thinkers are required.Look at what macron is doing right now with macron and his pension reforms. Voters have been of pension recipients and those that are recovering welfare rather than actually contributing to the economy.. 
3. government is “a giant insurance company” 😭😭
4. Look at the NHS and productivity is decreasing no matter how much money you put in, it doesn’t work out.
5. Price transparency in healthcare. Need to be more specific and targeted with the policy that you are trying to implement. For instance building in the economy is tough such as the UK. 

How much would the past be beneficial for Ai and the future?

The past provides valuable data and patterns that help train AI systems to make accurate predictions. Historical experiences teach developers how to avoid past mistakes in technology and ethics. Learning from past innovations and failures guides more responsible AI development. Understanding history helps AI contribute to solving long-term social and economic challenges. Using past knowledge allows AI to shape a more informed, ethical, and sustainable future.

Are unis doing well to ensure that these ideas are doing well? 

• unis are socialist by nature.
• don’t expect countries to 
• Teachers would not work.
• Minimal pay difference, corner office or parking space.
• Its more important to get it done rather than getting a argument across