Arthur Laffer that U.S. tax rates had in fact reached such extreme levels." Laffer is currently an economic adviser to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, who in 2012 zeroed out state tax liability for approximately 330,000 of the top wage earners in the state. The state, which had previously had a budget surplus, experienced a budget deficit of about $200 million in 2012. Drastic cuts to state funding for education and infrastructure have been implemented because of the budget deficits. Brownback's tax overhaul was described in a June 2017 article in "The Atlantic" as the United States' "most aggressive experiment in conservative economic
Contract curve the initial allocations. The analysis cannot say which particular point along the contract curve they will end up at — this depends on the two people's bargaining skills. In the case of two goods and two individuals, the contract curve can be found as follows. Here formula_1 refers to the final amount of good 2 allocated to person 1, etc., formula_2 and formula_3 refer to the final levels of utility experienced by person 1 and person 2 respectively, formula_4 refers to the level of utility that person 2 would receive from the initial allocation without trading at all, and formula_5