Desperately Seeking Bruce Bartlett

By John Tamny

In his brilliant 1981 book Reaganomics, economist Bruce Bartlett observed that “to the Keynesians, all tax cuts are the same.” Seeking to show why that was not the case, Bartlett took readers on a masterful ride through tax policy in the 20th century.
 
As Bartlett put it, the “individual entrepreneur is still the basic motivating force in the economy ” and any “measures which suppress entrepreneurship will ultimately cause the economy to stagnate.” With the top tax rate at the nosebleed level of 71 percent at the time of the book’s publication, Bartlett’s cure was among other things lower taxes in order to reduce the cost of innovation.

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