JFK and the Reagan Revolution A Secret History of American Prosperity
By Lawrence kudlow

The fascinating, suppressed history of how JFK pioneered supply-side economics.
John F. Kennedy was the first president since the 1920s to slash tax
rates across-the-board, becoming one of the earliest supply-siders.
Sadly, today s Democrats have ignored JFK s tax-cut legacy and have
opted instead for an anti-growth, tax-hiking redistribution program,
undermining America s economy. One person who followed JFK s
tax-cut growth model was Ronald Reagan. This is the never-before-told
story of the link between JFK and Ronald Reagan. This is the secret
history of American prosperity. JFK realized that high taxes that
punished success and fanned class warfare harmed the economy. In the
1950s, when high tax rates prevailed, America endured recessions every
two or three years and the ranks of the unemployed swelled. Only in the
1960s did an uninterrupted boom at a high rate of growth (averaging 5
percent per year) drive a tremendous increase in jobs for the long term.
The difference was Kennedy s economic policy, particularly his push for
sweeping tax-rate cuts. Kennedy was so successful in the 60s that
he directly inspired Ronald Reagan s tax cut revolution in the 1980s,
which rejuvenated the economy and gave us another boom that lasted for
two decades. Lawrence Kudlow and Brian Domitrovic reveal the secret
history of American prosperity by exploring the little-known battles
within the Kennedy administration. They show why JFK rejected the advice
of his Keynesian advisors, turning instead to the ideas proposed by the
non-Keynesians on his team of rivals. We meet a fascinating cast of
characters, especially Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, a Republican.
Dillon s opponents, such as liberal economists Paul Samuelson, James
Tobin, and Walter Heller, fought to maintain the high tax rates
including an astonishing 91% top rate that were smothering the economy.
In a wrenching struggle for the mind of the president, Dillon convinced
JFK of the long-term dangers of nosebleed income-tax rates, big
spending, and loose money. Ultimately, JFK chose Dillon s tax cuts and
sound-dollar policies and rejected Samuelson and Heller. In
response to Kennedy s revolutionary tax cut, the economy soared. But as
the 1960s wore on, the departed president s priorities were undone by
the government-expanding and tax-hiking mistakes of Presidents Johnson,
Nixon, Ford, and Carter. The resulting recessions and the stagflation of
the 1970s took the nation off its natural course of growth and
prosperity-- until JFK s true heirs returned to the White House in the
Reagan era. Kudlow and Domitrovic make a convincing case that the
solutions needed to solve the long economic stagnation of the early
twenty-first century are once again the free-market principles of
limited government, low tax rates, and a strong dollar. We simply need
to embrace the bipartisan wisdom of two great presidents, unleash
prosperity, and recover the greatness of America."