Most Dishonest Wall Street Journal Editorial Ever

Yes, it's the Wall Street Journal editorial page reporting more American Enterprise Institute-quality research from Kevin Hassett. This is the most mendacious ever.

Mark Thoma is on the case:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/yet-again-tax-c.htmlMark Thoma: Yet Again, Tax Cuts Do Not Pay for Themselves: The Wall Street Journal says Kevin Hassett has discovered the Laffer curve, but I think these data might say something else. Here's the picture from the editorial where they are making their usual plea for more tax cuts:

The blue line is supposed to be the Laffer curve, but this is far from compelling. Since it looks like all that's been done here is to draw a line through an outlier, Norway (an outlier that in other contexts we are told to ignore because it is an outlier, e.g. see below), and since this is clearly not the best fitting line to these data, here's another possibility:

...[R]evenues rise with tax rates, and the fit also looks better than in the first graph. Toss out Norway, and the fit looks even better (and to quote The Economist blog on this point, "Throwing out Norway...")