Much has been said of Obama’s intelligence. Oprah said he is brilliant. While he appears an intelligent politician and a personal class act, much more is required for the office he is seeking.

Kennedy was surrounded with some of the most intelligent people ever assembled in the White House. VP Johnson commented how each person he met was smarter than the next. Yet these advisors delivered the Bay of Pigs and the entry into Viet Nam.

Your intelligence will serve you well when you can islolate a problem and have the time to ponder the sides. But when you must decide quickly with less than all of the facts, without sleep or food for extended periods you must rely on conviction, principles and a moral center to guide you.

Reagan may have not been the most intelligent president but he had enough conviction and faith in his tax policy to stay with his program in spite of constant derision from the media and even members of his own party. (George H. Bush called it voodoo economics.) Reagan was vindicated with an economic success that lasted 25 years.

Does the candidate believe in property rights, the rights and supremacy of the individual,and the free market or does he believe in statist solutions and elitist control.

It is more important to know a candidate’s stand on basic principles than his IQ.

Noted economist Arthur Laffer was hosted by Fickling and Company. The architect of the Laffer Curve and supply side economics, the intellectual basis of the Reagan revolution related why he thinks the tax policy of the candidates is so critical.

The critical measurement is the incremental tax rate on the wealthy; what will the next dollar of income yield the risk taker. The wealthy are focused on this and this will stimulate or kill incentives to produce and grow. The loss of static revenue from a tax cut is more than offset by the greater production of taxable income and thus tax revenues. This has been proven repeatedly by IRS tax revenues from the last century of tax cuts.

The richest 1% have seen their tax revenue as a % of GDP double during the last few decades of tax cuts. This is the only income group showing this increase;

Tax cuts on the lower income at the lower rates also generate loss of static revenues with no offsetting production of more taxable income and thus tax revenues.

This means that the tax plans proposed by Hillary, Obama, and Edwards would likely lead to dramatically reduced revenues and a fiscal crisis. Laffer voted for Bill Clinton twice and supports Bush’s tax policy.

With the proposed extension of social security taxes to the full income range, the rise from letting the Bush cuts expire and the high rates of states like California the tax rate hits 60% depending on your location. This is an income killer. (Laffer recently moved from California to Nashville to escape their high tax rates.)

The recent tax rebates are a joke. The $600 stimulation will be offset by the loss in purchasing power from the people who will have to pay for those rebates.

Laffer expressed particular disappointment in the economists who are openly supporting these policies knowing they are fruitless and destructive, in order to gain political influence. The profession is becoming a lobbying group.

Gratitudes and tips to Roy Fickling and Fickling and Company for hosting this economic pathfinder.

Hillary makes a very good point that she is carrying the big states with the most electoral votes who are most likely to vote Democrat. Many of the states Obama has carried will not likely vote Democrat. Therefore she has a greater chance of winning in the final election.

However, I think Hillary’s supporters will largely vote Obama if he wins the primary, and he will thus likely carry the same states she would have. I am less certain that all of Obama’s supporters would as thoroughly support Hillary if she pulled out a victory in the primaries.

It is unfortunate that we have a distict division where the ten most populated urban states can decide the leader for the other forty.

A few recent additions to my collection of quotes:

“The whole world has divided itself into conservatives and progressives. The business of the progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” G.K. Chesterton

“My friend is a paranoid hypocondriac, but I think he is faking.” from ‘Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid’

“I can’t stand to live in a culture where the measure of a man is self indulgence.” Pat Dollard

“The most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most truth.” Jonah Goldberg

“The only thing a woman hates more than being considered a sex object is not being considered a sex object. ” an anonymous sex object

“There is always an easy solution to every problem; neat, plausible and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

“Certainty is more characteristic of arrogance than intelligence.” HKO