type: timeline_event
Jude Wanniski, Wall Street Journal associate editor, publishes "The Way the World Works," providing the intellectual manifesto for supply-side economics and advocating for massive tax cuts and return to the gold standard. Building on Arthur Laffer's 1974 napkin sketch, Wanniski's book laments the "failure of high tax rates and U.S. monetary policy under Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter" and argues that cutting taxes on the wealthy will increase government revenue through economic growth. Wanniski's 1978 Public Interest article "Taxes, Revenues, and the 'Laffer Curve'" names and popularizes Laffer's theory, while his position at the Wall Street Journal provides mainstream media platform for promoting supply-side ideology to business and political elites. The timing - same year as Bork's "Antitrust Paradox" publication and concurrent with Heritage Foundation expansion and conservative infrastructure building - demonstrates coordinated ideological offensive across multiple fronts: legal theory (Bork), economic theory (Wanniski/Laffer), think tank policy (Heritage), and media advocacy (WSJ). Wanniski's work influences Congressman Jack Kemp, who meets with Laffer and Wanniski in 1976 and introduces supply-side tax cut legislation in Congress, creating the policy framework Reagan will adopt in his 1980 presidential campaign. This represents the economic ideology dimension of Powell Memo implementation, providing intellectual justification for policies that redistribute wealth upward while claiming to benefit all through market mechanisms.