It's a peripheral issue, IMO, unless you think a government's chief
concern should be of increasing its return from its servants, rather
than providing services while presenting the lightest possible burden
on same.
Maximizing host yield is a parasite's calculation, not a government's.
Exactly, except for government has become essentially parasitic and/or
serving special interests.
The Laffer curve has to have some truth to it /a priori/. The stupid
thing about using it as an arguing point is that it totally bypasses
the basic moral/justice question of "Should there be a tax for purpose
X and how much?"
If the question is "should government revenue be maximized," then the
answer to that question is always "no." And that is the way the
Laffer curve comes up in discussion. I have _never_ heard any of the
people arguing the point care at all whether a tax is justified ...
_never_. This was never Laffer's point and moreover, it was not even
an point that Laffer claimed as originally his. It has become an item
of "right-left" bickering rather than just a simple economic
proposition, which is what it really is. Marginal tax rates were high
when Laffer said this, so his timing was probably good as a reminder
that there are limits to the "benefits" of taxation.
Laffer was right in principle, but it is extremely hard to actually
know where some population and its "economy" (a nation, for example)
is on a taxRate/Revenue basis. An economy is not some simple toy to
experiment with -- to see how it acts. An international comparison is
fraught with perilous assumption making. It is not "chaos," as
Gardner says, it is too complex for people to understand. A lack of
rational understanding does not equate to an absense of orderly
behavior. A robin does not need a blueprint to build a nest.