Earlier today, I linked to Arpit Gupta’s post on the Laffer Curve. You’ll see that I never mentioned Bruce Bartlett in the post. Here is what the post said about Bartlett:

So where is the peak of the Laffer curve, and where does America fall in comparison? The left-of-center experts who Matthews polls offer estimates that increased tax rates would not decrease revenues until marginal tax rates were in the 60-70% range. Even some economists on the right – notably Bruce Bartlett, an economist who served in the first Bush Administration – projects that this limit may not be reached until rates hit 85%.

And later in the post:

A more rigorous treatment of this topic comes from a paper that Bruce Bartlett references, by University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig (someone whose work we have previously featured here), and Mathias Trabandt.

Those are the only two references to Bartlett. Having revisited the Washington Post discussion, Bartlett wrote the following:

Bruce Bartlett, columnist, Forbes.com; former adviser to Reagan and Bush I:
“I would hate to venture a specific number…. I would, however, say that I think the top rate could be quite a bit higher than it is without significantly impairing incentives or leading to excessive amounts of tax avoidance. I think 50 percent is an important threshold and I would be very reluctant to go higher even if it raised net revenue…. Anthony Atkinson, probably the leading public finance economist in England, estimates (PDF) that the top rate could go as high as 63% to 83% before it became counterproductive in terms of revenue…The European Central Bank…finds that only two European countries are on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. All other countries could raise substantial additional revenue by raising tax rates.”
“Since our rates are much lower than those it Europe, it suggests that we have a very long way to go before the top rate became counterproductive.”

That is, he cited Anthony Atkinson to sugest that a top rate in the neighborhood of 63 to 83 percent was the limit before getting on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve.

Arpit’s post should have made clear that the estimate was Atkinson’s, not Bartlett’s. My sense is that this was not a deliberate misrepresentation. Rather, Bartlett appeared to be offering his interpretation of the state of the evidence, which, of course, is what Arpit’s post is about.

Yet Bartlett has written a peculiar post in response. The title is “Do I Think the Top Rate Should Be 85 Percent?”:

Short answer: no, despite what some Republican hack operation apparently thinks. (I just assume that any organization with Bill Kristol among its leaders is per se a Republican hack operation.) [Emphasis added.]

Note that “apparently thinks” has a plain meaning: it suggests that the post implied that Bartlett supports raising the top rate in 85 percent. Having seen the sentences in question, I don’t think that’s a fair characterization. Below, in the comments, Bartlett writes:

Although the post doesn’t actually say I support raising the top rate, it seems to imply it. Otherwise, why mention my name at all when it was Atkinson who said the revenue-maximizing rate might be 83% (not 85%). In any case, I never said that I thought the revenue-maximizing rate was 85%. I can only assume that the purpose of mentioning me at all was to put me in a negative light. [Emphasis added.]

The words “seems to imply it” are, I think you’ll agree, doing a lot of work here. He continues in another comment:

I have stated as clearly as I know how that it is Anthony Atkinson, not me, who thinks that the revenue maximizing top rate might be somewhere between 63% and 83%, For the life of me, I do not see why people persist in citing me as the source of this calculation. The only reason I can think of is that right wingers like to use me as come sort of foil, turncoat or someone who is just plain nuts. There is simply no reason whatsoever why my name needed to be included in that post unless the purpose was to try and imply that merely citing a reputable economist who said the revenue maximizing rate might be as high as 83% means that somehow or other I support an increase in the top rate to that level. The only alternative is that whoever wrote the post I cited is simply incompetent and doesn’t know how to read the post in which I was originally quoted and confused me for Anthony Atkinson.

Again, I urge you to read Arpit’s original post to gauge whether this is a fair characterization of the plain meaning of the text. Arpit is someone I’ve known for some time, and he often finds himself at odds with views held by Republican politicians and movement conservatives on a wide range of issues including the level of taxation, financial regulation, and immigration, among many others. To characterize Arpit as a “right winger” strikes me as odd. The idea that there is a concerted campaign to discredit Bartlett also strikes me as odd. Concerted campaigns of this kind are, in my limited experience, fairly rare.

Note that the post never adopted a polemical tone and treated all of those cited respectfully before advancing a fairly modest argument of its own. As an employee of Economics 21, I am obviously an interested party in this dispute. I’m also writing in my capacity as a friend