Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status »

Arthur B. Laffer, Ph.D. is the founder and chairman of Laffer Associates, an economic research and consulting firm.  A member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board for both of his two terms, he invented the Laffer Curve and triggered a world-wide tax-cutting movement in the 1980s.  Dr. Laffer received a B.A. in economics from Yale University and received a MBA and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University.

Stephen Moore, an economist and policy analyst who founded and served as president of the Club for Growth from 1999 to 2004, is a member of the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal and a Senior Economics Writer at The Journal.

When Arthur B. Laffer spearheaded the theory of supply-side economics and became a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, he took his place as an economic icon. More recently, he joined with Stephen Moore and Peter J. Tanous to write The End of Prosperity — a clarion call delineating what is wrong with current political approaches to America's present economic challenges. Steve Forbes himself described The End of Prosperity as "brilliantly insightful," saying "READ IT — AND ACT!"

Now Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore follow the rousing success of The End of Prosperity with a book even more vital to America and Americans, delivering a plan that shows how our country can regain its lost prosperity. With the economy flat on its back, unemployment at a twenty-five-year high, and the housing default crisis still worsening, is this even possible? But America can once again become the land of economic opportunity, and this brilliant new book tells us exactly how.

While President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama may hail from different parties, their response to the crisis has been strikingly similar. The Bush-Obama plan is a failure that has produced nothing except a cascade of trillions of dollars of debt. Is the situation hopeless?

No, say Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore resoundingly, the situation is not hopeless. A return to prosperity is still entirely possible...if the correct strategies are followed. In The End of Prosperity, the authors primarily discussed how lower taxes areessential to economic growth. Now, in Return to Prosperity, they detail the other essential components: putting government at all levels on a low-fat diet; emphasizing debt reduction and retirement; and bringing back the investor class in America, where every American can "own a piece of the rock."

In a time where most of the proposed solutions are fraught with peril, the argument provides a refreshing counterbalance. The Return to Prosperity is a prescription that gives America the fundamental tools it needs in order to set about recovery. This book is an urgently needed road map to renewed prosperity, and it is vital reading for anyone who worries that the current economy is faltering, with no clear plan articulated for recovery.

Introduction 1

Pt. 1 Reactive Policies

1 Energy Independence and Protectionism 13

2 Energy Independence and Foreign Policy 21

3 Offshore Drilling 28

4 Cap-and-Trade Regulations 31

5 Nuclear Power 36

6 Fiscal Stimulus 39

7 The Increase in Public Debt 50

8 Is the Stimulus Working? 59

9 Cash for Clunkers 62

10 Tax the Rich to Pay for Government 67

11 President Obama and Health Care 75

12 Minimum Wage Laws and Unions Create Unemployment 79

Pt. 2 Fiscal Policy

13 Getting Tax Policies Right 91

14 Grow the Pie or Divide the Pie 126

15 Economic Fiction Is Driving Fiscal Policies 151

16 Righting Our Economic Course - The Complete Flat Tax 168

17 Tax Amnesty 194

18 Addressing Global Warming While Growing the Economy 205

19 Fight Poverty and the Poverty Trap With Enterprise Zones 210

20 Other Flat-Tax Proposals 219

Pt. 3 Monetary and Trade Policies: Interest Rates, Exchange Rates, and Inflation

21 Monetary Policy 225

22 There Is No Connection between Growth and Inflation 235

23 Setting the Stage for Financial Collapse: The Alchemy of 2003-2009 250

24 Lessons from the Great Depression 261

25 Trade Policy 268

Summary: A Prescription for America 283

Appendix The Laffer Curve 291

Index 311