ABSTRACT
Keynesians had to wait until the 1960s to sniff at the hems of power, only to fail in the Camelot days of JFK and Vietnam. Monetarists got trapped in Goldwater’s burning wagon in 1964, although later they did better in other lands with Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. Marxism, of course, was perverted by Lenin fifty years after the fact. But classical supply-side economics has “hit the ground running,” as that bandied Reagan camp saying goes. “Progress,” wrote George Santayana, “is relative to an ideal which reflection creates.” “Change,” said Bertrand Russell, “is indubitable. Progress is a matter of controversy.” There is little “reflection” in classical supply-side economics, which, no doubt, is the reason why it has been able to reduce all “controversy” to a romantic celebration of an idealized capitalism. Supply-side economics revolves around the Laffer curve. Without it, there would be little left. It is the glue that holds classical supply-side economics together, tenuously.
