Wealth & Money Quote by Arthur Laffer

Laffer is doing a neat rhetorical judo move here: he narrows inflation to an almost childproof ratio (dollars divided by goods), then uses that simplification to pry unemployment out of the conversation. The cadence is didactic, even impatient. He repeats “it goes up” like a metronome, trying to make the causal chain feel mechanical rather than contested. If you accept the framing, the conclusion arrives pre-loaded: inflation is what happens when policymakers pump up nominal demand while real production lags, so the villain is “more money,” not the messy labor-market story people want to tell.

The subtext is a politics of clarity. By insisting unemployment “has nothing to do” with prices except through fewer goods, Laffer sidesteps arguments about wage dynamics, bargaining power, and the possibility that joblessness can suppress demand and therefore prices. He’s also quietly asserting a hierarchy of explanations: real output and the money supply are the adult levers; employment is a derivative, almost a distraction.

Context matters because this is a Laffer signature move: translate macroeconomics into an intuitive parable that travels well in policy fights. It’s aimed less at settling a seminar-room debate than at disciplining the public narrative. If inflation is just “more money chasing fewer goods,” then the remedy is equally tidy: restrain money growth, boost production, and stop treating unemployment policy as inflation policy. The elegance is the sales pitch; the omissions are where the ideology lives.