Robert Mundell Interview by Jude Wanniski, 1974

This article by Jude Wanniski was the result of an interview with me about my ideas for economic policy in the wake of the recession that had already hit the United States in 1974 as a result of the quadrupling of oil crises at the beginning of the year. It was perhaps the first succinct presentation of the economic ideas that came to be associated with Supply-Side Economics, ideas that came to fruition when they were adopted by Ronald Reagan when he was elected President of the United States in 1980. I had earlier argued at the conference of the American Enterprise Institute in June 1974 that the increase in oil prices had worsened the US terms of trade and had effects similar (though not identical) to a large increase in tax rates, and that the best antidote to it was a decrease in US tax rates to the extent of at least $15 billion. As the recession worsened at the time of this interview I doubled that number. Jude Wanniski, working on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, brought to the small group of supply-siders meeting periodically at Michael One Restaurant in downtown New York a relentless curiosity about economics and infectious enthusiasm for good economic policy that made him with Robert Bartley, then editor of the Editorial Page of the Journal, one of the most important expounders of the new ideas.