I Wonder if Obama has Heard of Laffer

This morning's Wall Street Journal is full of good stuff. The back page has a fairly short article by Arthur Laffer, apparently written to help the president with one of his main problems.

"Some people actually believe government can create jobs by taxing and borrowing from people with jobs and then giving that money to people without jobs. They call this demand stimulus. To make matters worse, other people think these demand-stimulus ideas warrant a serious response.

Government taxes cigarettes to stop people from smoking, not to get them to smoke. Government fines speeders so they won't speed, not to encourage them to drive faster. And yet contrary to common sense, it seems perfectly natural to some people that government would tax people who work or companies that are successful only to give ... "

But I wonder if the president ever sees or hears anything his handlers don't want him to see or hear. One would think that if everything else that has been tried has failed, one might give some thought to a totally different idea. If it didn't work he could blame it on Bush or the Republicans and if it did he could take credit for it. What's to lose?

There are some other good articles in the Monday morning edition of the WSJ.