In 1978, Wanniski came out with The Way the World Works, a global history focused single-mindedly on marginal tax rates and entrepreneurship. It was high taxes that caused the fall of Rome, tax moderation that President Warren Harding was talking about when he promised a “Return to Normalcy,” and tax cuts that spurred Japan’s post-war boom. The book sparkles with aphorisms, but scarcely a page passes in which the reader does not feel a pang of doubt about whether Wanniski knows what he is talking about.
