Laffer curve cited directly by Laffer. For example, in 1924, Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon wrote: "It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates". Exercising his understanding that "73% of nothing is nothing", he pushed for the reduction of the top income tax bracket from 73% to an eventual 24% (as well as tax breaks for lower brackets). Mellon was one of the wealthiest people in the United States, the third-highest income-tax payer in the mid-1920s, behind John
John Brooks (writer) II and the ill-fated introduction of the most famous failed automotive gambit in history, the Edsel. Brooks also wrote widely on other subjects as well, including the government-guaranteed loans to Chrysler Corporation, the public television show "Wall Street Week" and its creator Louis Rukeyser, an examination of supply-side economics, the banking behemoth Citibank, economist Arthur Laffer and his Laffer curve, the development of New Jersey's Meadowlands, New York City urban planner Robert Moses, and even the Southern grocery store chain Piggly Wiggly. Brooks's writing on finance won him three Gerald Loeb Awards, and moved Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith to