Dark Horses

When Jeffrey Bell breezed home to victory in last month’s Senate primary in New Jersey, he focused new attention on something called the Kemp-Roth tax bill, named for Representative Jack Kemp of New York and Senator William Roth of Delaware.

This legislation, which would cut federal tax rates 33 per cent across the board, was the principal issue of Bell’s campaign. He promoted it, as do its original sponsors and a growing legion of other supporters, as a way of revving up production, creating jobs, and shrinking the size of the federal deficit. To understand how a tax cut could achieve all this, it is necessary to grasp the theory on which Kemp, Bell, and Co. are proceeding, involving such things as marginal tax rates, “the wedge,” “the Laffer curve,” and other terms of the tax-cutting art. Fortunately, a handbook that explains it all is now available, in Jude Wanni- ski’s The Way the World Works (Basic Books, $12.95).

MS

About the Author

M. Stanton Evans

When Jeffrey Bell breezed home to victory in last month’s Senate primary in New Jersey, he focused new attention on something called the Kemp-Roth tax bill, named for Representative Jack Kemp of New York and Senator William Roth of Delaware.

This legislation, which would cut federal tax rates 33 per cent across the board, was the principal issue of Bell’s campaign. He promoted it, as do its original sponsors and a growing legion of other supporters, as a way of revving up production, creating jobs, and shrinking the size of the federal deficit. To understand how a tax cut could achieve all this, it is necessary to grasp the theory on which Kemp, Bell, and Co. are proceeding, involving such things as marginal tax rates, “the wedge,” “the Laffer curve,” and other terms of the tax-cutting art. Fortunately, a handbook that explains it all is now available, in Jude Wanni- ski’s The Way the World Works (Basic Books, $12.95).