AmosWEB is Economics: GLOSS*arama

Wednesday
July 9, 2025

AmosWEB means Economics with a Touch of Whimsy!

LAFFER CURVE: The graphical inverted-U relation between tax rates and total tax collections by government. Developed by economist Arthur Laffer, the Laffer curve formed a key theoretical foundation for supply-side economics of President Reagan during the 1980s. It is based on the notion that government collects zero revenue if the tax rate is 0% and if the tax rate is 100%. At a 100% tax rate no one has the incentive to work, produce, and earn income, so there is no income to tax. As such, the optimum tax rate, in which government revenue is maximized, lies somewhere between 0% and 100%. This generates a curve shaped like and inverted U, rising from zero to a peak, then falling back to zero. If the economy is operating to the right of the peak, then government revenue can be increased by decreasing the tax rate. This was used to justify supply-side economic policies during the Reagan Administration, especially the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (Kemp-Roth Act).

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production stages (169)
perfect competition, characteristics (97)
monopolistic competition (66)
total product curve (63)
U-shaped cost curves (60)

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FULL-EMPLOYMENT BUDGET: A hypothetical federal budget that would exist if the economy were at full employment. Differences between the actual federal budget and the full-employment budget result from taxes and expenditures that depend on gross domestic product. The full-employment budget indicates whether any of the federal government's fiscal policy is over- or under-stimulating the economy given the current position in the business cycle. During a recession the federal deficit should be just enough to generate a balanced budget at full employment. The same result is desirable if we're running a surplus with inflation. If the full-employment budget is NOT balanced, however, then we're doing too much or too little by way of fiscal policy and changes are in order.

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FULL-EMPLOYMENT BUDGET, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: July 9, 2025].

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TOTAL VARIABLE COST AND MARGINAL COST

A mathematical connection between marginal cost and total variable cost stating that marginal cost IS the slope of the total variable cost curve. This relation between total variable cost and marginal cost is also seen with total cost. The slope of the total cost curve is marginal cost, as well. The relation between total variable cost and marginal cost is but another in the long line of applications of the total-marginal relation.

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Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time going from convenience store to convenience store seeking to buy either a box of multi-colored, plastic paper clips or several orange mixing bowls. Be on the lookout for malfunctioning pocket calculators.
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A U.S. dime has 118 groves around its edge, one fewer than a U.S. quarter.

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