Laughs At Laffer’s Birthday
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Christopher Cox, Joel Citron, John Donelson, Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore, John Myers, and John Stossel roasted Arthur Laffer on Wednesday at Tavern on the Green on his 65th birthday. Mr. Laffer is the supply side economist best known for the “Laffer Curve,” which shows the relation between tax rates and the tax revenues governments collect. His career highlights include having been a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board. Mallory Factor welcomed attendees at the event, sponsored by the Washington based Free Enterprise Fund. Milton Friedman sent video greetings.
The audience laughed when John Myers of GE Capital asked what Barbra Streisand, Michael Moore, and Mr. Laffer had in common: “All voted for Bill Clinton.” He went on: “What happens when you cross Art Laffer and the Godfather? You get an offer you can’t understand.” “How many supply side economists does it takes to screw in a light bulb? If it needed changing, the market would have done it.” (An alternative punch line is “if the government would leave it alone, it would screw itself in.”)
Earlier in the evening, the audience roared when various curves were shown on a Power Point presentation, and one presenter said, “That’s not a curve, that’s Dick Cheney’s EKG.”
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BASTIAT REVELATIONS Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal was awarded the Bastiat Prize for Journalism at a dinner October 25. George Kerevan of the Scotsman (U.K.) won second prize, and honorable mention went to Allister Heath of the Business (U.K.). The prizes were established by the London-based International Policy Network, and celebrate journalists whose writing cleverly and wittily promotes the institutions of free society, emulating the 19th-century French philosopher Frederic Bastiat.
IPN executive director Julian Morris introduced Economist editor Bill Emmott, who mentioned Bastiat’s send-up of protectionism in his petition of candlemakers for protection against competition by the sun (adding, to audience laughter, “not The New York Sun”). He spoke about a letter Bastiat wrote to the Economist in 1846 about his dream that barriers separating nations would be removed: “A first draft of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine,” Mr. Emmott added.
The Economist was founded by a Scottish businessman, and Le Libre-Exchange was edited by Bastiat. As Mr. Emmott said: “Neither were snappy titles. They were not going to be competing with the National Lampoon of their time.”
Mr. Emmott said the Economist has matched swords with Silvio Berlusconi, The magazine once wrote that the Italian leader owned or controlled almost every media outlet in Italy, which might cause a conflict of interest. Mr. Emmot noted that the Economist has likewise been attacked in Il Giornale, a Berlusconi-owned newspaper. The paper called the Economist communist, offering as evidence that “the editor looks like Lenin.” Maybe in terms of baldness, Mr. Emmott said to gales of laughter, “but in terms of liberty, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.”
Previous judges for the Bastiat Prize have been Margaret Thatcher and Nobelist James Buchanan. Presently, judges include Nobelist Milton Friedman; Edward Crane, founder and president of the Cato Institute; and Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto.
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YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION Sonny Mehta hosted a reception for Jung Chang and Jon Halliday to celebrate the publication of their new biography, “Mao: The Unknown Story” (Alfred A. Knopf), a meticulous 800-page indictment of modern China’s autocratic ruler. A 10-year opus by this husband and wife team.
Mr. Halliday is a Russian historian and former senior visiting research fellow at King’s College, University of London. He ranks Mao along with Hitler and Stalin as the greatest monsters of the 20th century. As a 16-year old, Ms. Chang, author of the novel “Wild Swans,” witnessed the barbarities of the Cultural Revolution, the decade-long descent into state-sponsored savagery. The co-author bitterly reminisced, “Three million people died violent deaths during the Cultural Revolution, and 100 million were made to suffer. If this is paradise, I wondered, what then is hell?”
Seen in the crowd was Fran Lebowitz, who told Pat Buckley she is half done with a book on whatever happened to “progress.” After the party, Pat and William F. Buckley Jr. headed to a party for Mike Wallace at the Plaza Athenee.
