Laffer curve billion), but with large uncertainty on both sides. Robert Chote, the chairman of the UK Office for Budget Responsibility commented that Britain was "strolling across the summit of the Laffer curve", implying that UK tax rates were close to the optimum rate. Laffer has presented the examples of Russia and the Baltic states, which instituted a flat tax with rates lower than 35% around the same time that their economies started growing. He has similarly referred to the economic outcome of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts, the Kennedy tax cuts, the 1920s tax cuts, and the changes in US capital gains
Laffer curve Jude Wanniski, who was also present at the meeting. The basic concept was not new; Laffer himself notes antecedents in the writings of the 14th-century social philosopher Ibn Khaldun and others. Laffer does not claim to have invented the concept; he notes that there are antecedents, including in the "Muqaddimah" by 14th-century Tunisian scholar Ibn Khaldun, and in the writings of John Maynard Keynes. It was not until the 1970s that Laffer's name began to be associated with the idea. The term "Laffer curve" was reportedly coined by Jude Wanniski (a writer for "The Wall Street Journal") after a 1974