The Nigerian prince scam has been going on for years.
Everyone knows what it consists of: a millionaire (and a prince, why not) needs to discreetly remove his immense fortune from Nigeria and asks the recipient of the message for his checking account number to transfer him a bundle, of which he can keep a part .
Then setbacks arise, the millionaire requests small money transfers and things end as they do.
It's a silly scam, but some people keep falling for it.
After all, there is a theoretical possibility that a Nigerian millionaire needs to discreetly get his money out of Nigeria and choose you as his partner.
It's a one in a billion chance, yes.
But it exists.
Another scam that has been successfully practiced for years, despite the fact that the scammer has absolutely no chance of winning, is the so-called "Laffer curve".
Let us clarify that the Laffer curve starts from something obvious: if the Treasury reduces taxes to zero, nothing enters;
if he raises them to 100%, he doesn't earn anything either because nobody is compensated for working.
Therefore, between zero and one hundred there is an optimal point.
The grace of the scam consists in convincing the victim that the tax level in a given country is excessively high.
"If we lower taxes," says the scammer, "the economy will grow and we will collect more."
The inventor of this puff is called Arthur Laffer.
In 1974 he convinced Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (two other fraud professionals) by drawing a curve on a napkin.
Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980 based on the fucking curve and bequeathed a gigantic deficit.
In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office did a paper on the Laffer thing and proved it to be a scam.
But Laffer is smooth-talking, and in 2012 he cajoled Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback into eliminating state taxes on the wealthiest to provide the entire population with extraordinary prosperity.
As expected, the thing ended in ruin.
In 2017, Republican and Democratic congressmen joined forces to repeal the tax policy of Brownback, then the most unpopular governor in the United States.
Arthur Laffer didn't care anymore, because at that point he had become an adviser to Donald Trump, who in 2019 decorated him for his contribution to science: criminals usually maintain a code of honor among themselves.
Liz Truss, short-lived British Prime Minister, tried to sneak the curve scam to her compatriots (and international investors), but the staff was already very savvy.
Truss lasted only 45 days, which was enough to burn 80,000 million pounds (about 90,000 million euros) in the stock markets and, incidentally, sink the currency.
The next time you hear that “let's cut taxes and everything will be fine”, you can believe it.
Or not.
If you believe it, look in your mail for that old message from the Nigerian prince and respond immediately: "Dear prince, here goes my checking account and, to save you trouble, tell me where I can send you my savings."
It's a matter of securing the play, in case the curve doesn't quite work.
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