Investing

What Movies and Cigarettes Tell Us About the Laffer Curve

John Tamny of RealClearMarkets The great economist Arthur Laffer long ago observed that high rates of taxation don’t always correlate with high levels of government revenue. If the tax–or price–put on certain activities is too high, individuals will often change…

By Douglas A. McIntyre

Published August 10, 2009, 9:47am ET · 1 min read

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John Tamny of RealClearMarkets

The great economist Arthur Laffer long ago observed that high rates of taxation don’t always correlate with high levels of government revenue. If the tax–or price–put on certain activities is too high, individuals will often change their behavior to avoid paying it.

Legislators have for the longest time resisted Laffer’s reasoning, and, as evidenced by the electorate’s willingness to elect politicians eager to increase taxes, voters aren’t completely sold either. But as individuals, on the micro level, it seems we’re all correctly enthralled by the “Laffer Curve.”

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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