# Quote — Jean Chretien, My Years as Prime Minister

> I never bought into the Laffer curve, a theory, named after an American supply-side economist who had been an adviser to the Reagan administration, that essentially argues that a government will increase its revenue by reducing its taxes. If it were that easy, everybody would do it. What politician doesn't want to reduce taxes in order to win votes? Taken to its logical extreme, the Laffer curve makes no sense because, if you lower your taxes to zero, how are you going to get higher revenues? In practice, every government that toyed with this theory ended up with larger deficits, higher interest rates and greater social inequality.

- Author: [Jean Chretien](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-chretien.md)
- Book: [My Years as Prime Minister](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-chretien/my-years-as-prime-minister.md)
- Page: 75
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Chr%C3%A9tien#My_Years_As_Prime_Minister_(2007)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-chretien/my-years-as-prime-minister/i-never-bought

## More from this book

> Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another.

p. 16 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-chretien/my-years-as-prime-minister/trudeau-valued-performance.md)

> There's no such thing as a genius in politics, or at least I have never met one. There are only human beings, some better than others, who rise or fall on the challenges they meet.

p. 211 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-chretien/my-years-as-prime-minister/theres-no-such.md)

> I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister.

p. 38 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-chretien/my-years-as-prime-minister/i-didnt-feel.md)