Laffer curve dinner meeting at the Two Continents Restaurant in the Washington Hotel with Arthur Laffer, Wanniski, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy press secretary Grace-Marie Arnett. In this meeting, Laffer, arguing against President Gerald Ford's tax increase, reportedly sketched the curve on a napkin to illustrate the concept. Cheney did not accept the idea immediately, but it caught the imaginations of those present. Laffer professes no recollection of this napkin, but writes: "I used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in my classes and with anyone else who would listen to me". There are historical precedents other than those
Optimal foraging theory items that an animal should carry back to its nesting site or the optimal size of a food item that an animal should feed on. Figure 1, shows an example of how an optimal decision rule could be determined from a graphical model. The curve represents the energy gain per cost (E) for adopting foraging strategy x. Energy gain per cost is the currency being optimized. The constraints of the system determine the shape of this curve. The optimal decision rule (x*) is the strategy for which the currency, energy gain per costs, is the greatest. Optimal foraging models can