The Laffer Curve was the main feature of my college-level courses on economics, which I found even at the time a valueless and deceptive tool for muddling how and why the federal government imposes taxes. Starting from the premise that the tax rate controls all business activity, and that there is an optimal rate to maximize government profit, it was a simplistic concept that disconnected from its professed goal when implemented.

The purpose of maximizing tax revenue only advances the general welfare if the funds are then re-distributed effectively, rather than merely drawn off from society for administrative purposes. Yet the theory was not tested for generating tax revenue: it was presented as a fiscal enticement to induce the desire for tax rates to be reduced for those with the means of production, only ostensibly as a strategy for maximizing tax revenue.

<< Criticisms of the Laffer Curve
• The Single Tax Rate. The tax system is complex and raising the rate of one tax can impact or offset the benefits or negatives of reducing another. The Laffer curve overly simplifies the relationship between taxes by allocating a simplistic single tax rate.

• The T* or Ideal Tax Rate Changes. The Laffer Curve sets the ideal tax rate anywhere between 0 and 100. However, this rate may change due to economic circumstances.

• Tax Cuts Required for the Rich. The Laffer curve assumes an exact T* for maximizing government revenue and requires tax cuts for the rich.

• Assumptions of Individuals and Businesses. The Laffer curve assumes that higher taxes result in lower revenues because corporations may leave and employees will work fewer hours. However, employees may work harder or longer for career progression. Businesses do not rely solely on the tax rate for decision-making but also look for a skilled workforce and infrastructure, both of which offset an increased tax rate. >>

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp

The theory was open-ended, presuming a single tax rate, so when this was applied to affecting complex tax brackets there was no real guidance. It seemed to work in the Reagan era, but the GWB tax cuts were shown to have accelerated foreign rather than domestic investment.

Since the tax cuts clearly depleted the public coffer, cutting social programs became the fiscal counter, thereby eliminating the re-distribution process that is key to promoting general welfare. Individuals were seen as the peasant problem - lazy, worthless, stupid; and corporations were the imperial solution - intrepid, established, shrewd. The government chose a side when that was not its ideal role.

Corporations pay middle-class workers, but they also distribute profits to upper-class shareholders, and government has sometimes tried to correct egregious imbalances in those decisions. It is the power of the consumer instead that drives corporate activity, and funds distributed to the lower classes are more immediately re-infused into the economy. Skewing the redistribution to favor the top level goes against the professed goals of both maximizing tax revenue and promoting the general welfare.

Now we have many large corporations effectively paying zero federal taxes, on the premise that society benefits from their existence. It is inconsequential whether tax cuts actually stimulate the economy, in the complicated real-world situations that affect decisions beyond tax rates: the notion has become presumed true. The GDP number can be deceiving however: someone being struck in a car collision, admitted to a hospital and undergoing surgery has also generated factors adding to its increase, without deliberately intending so.

The Laffer Curve was hailed because it justified the federal government tipping the scale in favor of the wealthy, not for its projected notion of maximizing tax revenue by finding a proverbial single optimal rate. But the concept of the chart merely proposed that there would be an unknown crippling tax rate that should not be exceeded, and that all increases to that point would result in overall additions to tax revenue. In the hands of skilled bureaucrats this became the means of accelerating economic imbalance by declaring financially assisting the bloated wealthy benefitted everybody, against all logic and contradictory indicators, even a decreasing amount of tax revenue.

The tax cuts implemented by George W Bush, using the projected Clinton Surplus, were subtly featured in the intricately accurate prophecies of Nostradamus, in his characteristically cryptic manner. The seer had noted centuries before it occurred that the Scottish Frost of 1776 would mark the end of the American realm having its chief in London, with recognizable situations presented for the current era.

From 28 June 2020 regarding II.15:

<< Un peu devant monarque trucidé
Castor, Pollux en nef, astre crinite
L'erain publique par terre et mer vidé
Pise, Ast, Ferrare, Turin terre interdite

A bit before the monarch is slaughtered
Castor and Pollux with the ship, bearded star;
The public funds for land and sea emptied,
Pisa, Asti, Ferrara, Turin – land under interdict

Here the seer admits to playing with the timing at the outset, by stating the assassination of a monarch would be preceded by a comet appearing in Gemini (whose twins are named Castor and Pollux). The Nepalese royal family was subjected to a massacre on 1 June 2001, with Prince Dipendra allegedly killing ten at a family reunion dinner party; Comet Lee's period in Gemini had indeed preceded by about twenty months, occurring from 5 September 1999 to 24 September 1999. The third line best fits the effect of the contemporary Bush tax cuts, which distributed the perceived surplus from his presidential predecessor Clinton in a manner calculated to skew a greater proportion of fiscal relief towards the wealthiest taxpayers. This was done in two legislative acts, the first becoming law within a week of the Nepalese royal mass murder incident, the "Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001," signed on 7 June 2001. The second tax cut law ("Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003") was signed on 28 May 2003 – and it is the astrological conditions for that date which appear summarized in the final line, taking Pise for Pisces, Ast for Aquarius (Asti being known for white sparkling wine, Aquarius also starting with letter 'A' and symbolizing a water-bearer), Ferrare for Leo (implying iron-like strength), and Turin for Taurus: Uranus was then in Pisces; Mars and Neptune were in Aquarius; Jupiter was in Leo; and the Moon, Mercury and Venus were in Taurus. Peculiarly excluded was the Sun and Saturn then both in Gemini, the constellation he had gone out of the way to mention in the second line, by bringing in Comet Lee with odd sequencing.

The listing of towns for association with constellations was a device also noted in the final line of I.58, which again has Turin and Ferrare in parallel usage. But there he uses the imagery of a conjoined twin to symbolize the Grand Fixed Cross of 1999 –

Tranché le ventre, naîtra avec deux têtes
Et quatre bras: quelques ans entier vivra;
Jour qui Aquiloye célèbrera ses fêtes
Fossen, Turin, chef Ferrare suivra

Cutting the belly, it will be born with two heads
And four arms: it will survive intact for several years;
The day that Aquilon has its holiday celebrations
Fossano, Turin, the chief of Ferrara will follow

The four-armed two-headed child born by Caesarean section that lived into toddlerhood represents the Grand Fixed Cross also having four arms: taking Fossen for its 'ditch' root to signify the emotional abyss resonant with Scorpio, and Turin again simply for Taurus, it can be demonstrated that on 4 July 1999 the planet Mars progressed into Scorpio, while Jupiter likewise transitioned into Taurus (where Saturn already was). Another arm of the fixed cross had longer been established in Aquarius, with slow-moving Neptune and Uranus. The fateful configuration would indeed later be completed by the consolidation of the Leo component for Ferrare – Venus and Mercury were already there, with the Sun's predictable arrival in Leo around 22 July 1999 (by then Venus had slipped into Virgo, but the impression of the Grand Fixed Cross configuration still held strong). >>

The next day I appended -

<< ...the 'land under interdict,' meaning something was prohibited: this referred prophetically to the US budgetary sequestration circa 2013, when spending was constrained due to the fiscal drain the tax cuts had produced. >>

So the second half of II.15 focused on the two Bush era tax cuts from the time of the second Act in late May 2003, projecting the resulting Sequestration as being 'under interdict' about a decade later, with financial collapse, housing market crisis and other fiscal ills. A deliberate decision was made to avoid pursuing prior malfeasance, so that some restorative agenda could place during the Obama administration.

{Link to an article from late February 2013:}

https://www.cbpp.org/research/economic-downturn-and-legacy-of-bush-policies-continue-to-drive-large-deficits

{Article Title: "Economic Downturn and Legacy of Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Deficits
Economic Recovery Measures, Financial Rescues Have Only Temporary Impact"}

Because the first half of II.15 deftly gives the correct chronology for the movement of Comet Lee through Gemini as clearly preceding the identifiable Nepalese royal family massacre, the seer has demonstrated his accuracy for the second portion, conclusively knowing whereof he speaks. The emptying of the public coffer with two immense tax cuts led to the Crisis, responded to by Stimulus, yet ultimately leading to the Sequestration. The resolution of the 2000 election debacle was summarized in the final line of IX.4 (where two leaders are elected, with the foremost not holding office),