>> it clearly had an impact on the way people begin to think about economic policy. >> i was totally aware that a revolution was starting. >> if we did nothing else, we changed the world. >> this is how i tasted my first cup of coffee. >> boy, this is the first time in years. >> oh! >> ooh. >> stand by, take three. >> knowing for sure whether it was going to work, no. but what a grand experiment. >> take one.

my name is arthur laffer. i am an economist. i live in nashville, tennessee. and we are here in washington, d.c. at the w hotel. >> i was in the omb. i was the chief economist at the mb then. i found my friends up in the omb really boring. so, i always came down and hung out with the oao people. bill bradley was in that group, and christine todd whitman, and jim leach -- >> they were interns, as i recall. >> yeah, interns. it was just a fun group of people. >> art laffer, dick cheney, and i would have dinner from time to time, or lunch from time to time, or just have meetings in the white house from time to time. >> in 1974, we came to the hotel washington to the two continents

restaurant. that's where we sat down and talked about tax policy. and art drew the laffer curve. >> i invited jude wanniski, who was a writer for "the wall street journal" at the time. he passed on. but he kept all the records of this stuff. and in an article much later, it was called "taxes, revenues, and the 'laffer curve'." he recounted this dinner. so it was the four of us. that is the dinner we are talking about today. >> during that time, what we were trying to do was manage the transition from the nixon administration to the ford administration. there had never been anything like it. >> and the country was faced with some serious economic problems. and what was coming up through the system was not what i felt represented the direction the country should go. and it was in large measure coming from -- i think it's safe to say -- from speechwriters as

opposed to economists. >> we spent a lot of time on the economic program. >> my gosh. >> we were still doing it at vail at christmas time. >> i remember that very well. we spent a lot of time in ski clothes in the living room of the house that ford was renting. >> the bass house. >> gerry ford was proposing a tax increase. a 5% tax surcharge. so i was talking with don, back then he was chief of staff. and dick, who was deputy chief of staff. i said, you are not going to get 5% more revenue with a 5% tax surcharge. you may get 4% more revenue, you may get 3% -- you might also lose revenue because the tax base will shrink. i drew that little curve on the napkin to illustrate that. >> that is one of those events that stuck out in my mind. because it is not every day you see somebody whip out a sharpie. and mark up the cloth napkin at the dinner table. he was that way, drew on a lot of napkins. >> my recollection was we were in the restaurant, downstairs. sitting at a table like this. and you drew the curve on the napkin. i was struck by it. i never got the napkin. >> but i have -- the napkin that

was put in the smithsonian, the writing was, to don rumsfeld from arthur. why, if i did that, would don not have picked it up? >> i didn't want that trash. >> i had to deal with this all the time. i do these mathematical models, of the effects of taxes. if you know the math, it works out pretty nicely. it doesn't have the bite, the flavor, of the real world. so i would develop anecdotes to try to illustrate the economics, one of which was the laffer curve. which, if you tax people at 100%, no one will work, because they don't get the incentive to work, and the government will collect no revenues. if you tax people at 0%, everyone would work like mad but you're not collecting any revenues. >> basically the curve showed that with tax rates at zero, you were going to collect zero taxes. with a tax rate of 100%, you will collect zero revenue. you shut down the economy. >> it had the power of simplicity. it was a truth that could be expressed in a paragraph.

>> we each turned to each other and said, arthur laffer is absolutely brilliant. my memory is not perfect. i'm 82 years old. i could be wrong. â ♪ >> here's a question for you. when did reagan first see the laffer curve? >> well reagan -- i used to have, like with you don, i used to have lunch with reagan during the 1976 to 1980 period. he would come in -- just the two of us -- and he would come in with all these paper stacks, paper clips, and ask me questions. marty anderson wrote in the book, "revolution." he remembered the day he saw and understood it. he said i just saw the pres -- i don't remember that. i remembered doing that with the president but -- politics is where the rubber hits the road. i am not held responsible for public policy. i'm this guy sitting at the dinner and i go home at night. they actually are held accountable. but they understood what i said. they understood the context in which it was done.

they had to take those ideas and blend them with politics and the real world. >> it clearly had an impact on the way, at least on our side of the aisle, people began to think about economic policy and tax policy. revenues and growth. for me, it was a significant moment in my own development, if i can put it in those terms. >> it was so simple and so compelling. that the traditional liberal view was contested. the traditional conservative view of it was contested. >> it is not republican or democrat. it is not liberal or conservative. it is not left or right wing. it is economics. ok. vertical access, horizontal axis, tax revenues. >> vertical is the tax rate. n case you forgot. and the curve goes out like this. you may remember that. >> it is a bell curve. >> it's a bell curve, yeah. >> here is 100% right here. his is a zero --

>> where is jude when we need him? >> jude should be here. it really is sad. because he did do it. he made all of this stuff really happen. it was amazing. this time, i will make this to my friend, dick cheney. you got the first one and you gave it away, don. >> pardon me? >> you're saving it. >> this time, i'm going to get the napkin. >> it is going to go to the cheney museum. >> old friends are the best friends. there is no question that we have all three have been friends for many, many decades. something, i suppose, exceeding 40 years, four decades. >> these are my two favorite people, as you can tell. >> as long as we agreed with him, he liked us. >> don rumsfeld and i have been close friends for 40 years. he fundamentally changed my life, got me off the academic track and into politics and

government. art is one of the more interesting personalities. and so i have lunch and somebody lse paid for it. >> what does it say? >> that is classified. >> this game had never been seen in the wild before. i was dying to see how people would adapt to it. >> the garage is a bit of a myth. it didn't serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel that it was our home. we had no money. you have to work out of your home when you have no money.

>> boy, this is the first time in years. doing this all from memory. this is hard to remember in old computer language. i not only designed this, every little metal trace you see, i strapped onto a drafting

table. i built this whole board myself. because i wanted the chips in the ultimate, perfect position. i worked for a couple of weeks, every night until 4:00 in the morning. laying out the little things on a big drafting table that would eventually become this board. when i got done, i realized i had to drill eight holes in the board. i said, if i had only designed it a little differently, i would have only had five holes. i tore apart my entire design, and for another two weeks every night until 4:00 in the morning, to get it just that perfect so it would have five holes so you would never see the three missing. i needed it to be that artistically perfect to me. because it represents yourself when you build a great esign. >> here's the first computer we ever built. long before we even started a company. i hand-wired the entire bottom, soldered it all together. that was the first apple i computer ever. >> does it get boring to tell the story? >> never.

it's in my heart. those were the most incredible times. the summer i built the apple i computer, i was totally aware that a revolution was close to starting. i had been showing off my computer at the homebrew computer club. i had given away my designs for he apple i for free. steve jobs came into town. he would pop in, see what i was up to -- the latest thing i designed for fun -- and he somehow turned them into money for both of us. paul terrell -- he owned a store in mountain view. he'd seen me for quite a long time, demonstrating my computer. so steve jobs went to sell him some of our little boards that we had built for $20. he said, no. people want to come in, they want to buy it pre-built, they want to buy the thing ready to go. it cost us $250 to build, we ould sell it for $500. the retail price was $666.66 because i, as a mathematician, like repeating digits. and that's what it should

be. the garage is a bit of a myth. it's overblown. the garage represents us better than anything else, but we did no designs there. we would drive the finished products there, make them work, and then drive to the store that paid us cash. we outgrew the garage quickly. it wasn't like a whole company, you walk in, a bunch of people have desks. there were hardly ever more than two people in the garage. mostly they were just sitting around doing nothing productive. i was very much a geek. i was a social outsider. i did not look at the world in normal ways when i was young. i wanted my own computer my whole life. i had told my dad in high school, someday, i am going to wn a big computer. this board right here. the wires are not -- so i was happy once i had that apple i computer, i was happy for life.

but the apple ii was the great machine that was going to turn he world on end. where is the case? the apple ii was -- i did the best genius work of my life, that i was well known for. for saving parts, condensing things, getting extra performance, doing things people never imagined. this is our millionth apple ii computer. that is why it is gold. a million sounds like a large number, but you remember number one. you remember number 100. this is number one million of the apple ii. it will probably seem small in a couple years. so we had two phases. this garage was a little partnership with a partnership agreement. it was small stuff. the apple ii was the big company, we got an investment. once we got the investment, that is when steve's personality changed. he was going to be a businessman.

he wasn't going to be joking anymore. he was going to be dressed in a suit. on the cover of magazines. that was his role in life. steve just felt like computers added up to companies that could make money. when we went public, yeah, a few of us became unbelievably wealthy. we were worth so many hundreds of millions. i designed these machines because i wanted computers for myself. i wanted to help revolutions happen. i did not want that kind of ealth. i don't remember the beep command, do i? too bad, i wrote it in my own language. ooh -- yeah, i got it right. run. it says, hello, my name is steve. you can barely see it but it is there. soldering things together. putting the chips together. designing them. drawing them on drafting tables. it was so much a passion in my life. to this day, i want to stay at the bottom of the org chart and be an engineer. because that is where i want to be. >> standby, ready.

>> the notion then was, can we actually fill 24 hours a day with news? so far as knowing for sure whether it was going to work, no. but what a grand experiment. ♪

>> you hear 10 seconds, five seconds. 5, 4 -- then they would shut up, and you just see their fingers. and then you are on, literally. you're on. a certain aspect of your personality, if you get in this business, you have to be on to a ertain degree. well, not quite the same. >> how many years did lois sit on your left? >> many, many, many years.

we met in about 1976. we were both working at a tv station in sacramento. >> she was on one end of the ewsroom and i was on the other end. eventually, i spotted this really attractive, tall, leggy blonde. very good reporter, newscaster. and i remember remarking to a friend of mine, i said, i'm going to marry her. and i did. >> we married in 1979, about a year before we came to cnn. that was the sort of heyday of local anchors. there were no other options for watching tv, so we had huge ratings. >> the notion then was can we actually fill 24 hours a day with news? so far as knowing for sure whether it was going to work, no. but what a grand experiment. >> standby, ready.

>> 6:00 p.m., june 1, 1980. the first cable cast of cnn. >> ted turner threw to cnn and the studio inside and i think he said, cnn news. >> good evening, i am david walker. >> and i am lois hart. now here's the news. president carter -- >> we found out we were going to be the anchors of that newscast about, what, three or four days before that? >> probably. >> it was like, wow. we swallowed hard. we were told the reason we were selected, ted just, for whatever reason -- he liked our style. >> ted was the one who made the hoice. >> whatever we did on air, he thought we would best represent cnn at that time. so it was because of ted and quite an honor. >> i dedicate the news channel for america. >> ted turner is a visionary. very smart. a little crazy. brilliant businessman. brilliant, brilliant businessman. >> when he created cnn, they did

esearch. they said, don't do it. it will not work. bad idea. you're gonna lose money. he rolled every cent -- he was a mississippi riverboat gambler -- he rolled every nickel he had into that operation. sure enough, it did work. >> skies over baghdad have been illuminated. >> first gulf war. when cnn had live reports coming out of baghdad. great visuals of the bombs going off. some terrific reporting going on. i think that is when the world and the nation, everyone said, that was a wow moment. >> it is interesting that most of what people talk about when they are in the news is how fluffy and light news in general has gotten. the argument being they don't want hard news. we are going to try softer programming.

>> i don't have a problem with that. that is part of a day. out of 10 stories, you can have one or two stories that is of vital interest and importance. the rest are just fun to watch and amusing. >> cnn has provided a product over the years that the world would never have gotten any other way. which is a window to the world, really. that wouldn't have happened -- it wouldn't have driven all the rest of the cable networks to even be born. >> there was a moment in time when the board was trying to pull the plug on all the funds and have it not run. steve was there with wozniak. he said, i will pay for half of t if you will. t if you will. ♪

he's out there. t ithere's a guy out there whose making a name for himself in a sport where your name and maybe a number are what define you. somewhere in that pack is a driver that can intimidate the intimidator.

a guy that can take the king 7 and make it 8. heck. maybe even 9. make no mistake about it. they're out there. i guarantee it. welcome to the nascar xfinity series. >> on december 5, 1973 -- >> the super bowl was the venue

for a huge audience. master lock was the only one who did something exclusively for he super bowl. until we did 1984. what makes something memorable? i think the challenge has always been to break rules, find something new and unexpected as a way of engaging people and telling the story. i met steve when he was 24 years old. steve, from the day i met him, he was passionate and believed totally that this technology was not going to be a business for him and not just a hobby for wozniak. this was going to change the world. >> today, one year after lisa, e are introducing the first --

the third industry milestone product. macintosh. >> there was this challenge from steve, i have to introduce macintosh. it has to be dramatic and famous. it's got to be different. we had a meeting where we presented a whole bunch of thinking that went into launching macintosh. he thought it was brave. he thought it was great. it was the board of directors, thinking it was stupid and irresponsible. there was a moment when they were trying to pull the plug on the funds and have it not run. he was there with wozniak and said, i will pay for half of it if you will. it did not have to come to that. they did make that overture at one point. so you open on this place that represents the future. with people marching to a central hall. our idea was that big brother represented the control of technology by the few.

lots of people decided by the bluish quality and the competitive situation that apple found themselves in that big brother represented ibm. that wasn't the intent but it probably worked on that level as well. running down one of the corridors was a girl. you saw glimpses of her. she came bursting into the back of the room, and she stopped, swung once, twice, and then heaved the hammer. nd, a giant explosion. >> you will see why 1984 will not be like "1984." >> 1984 was not designed to only run on the super bowl. it was designed to have a media life beyond the super bowl. but the board of directors at apple decided it was irresponsible, since it did not show the product and the product was not available yet, to continue running. that becomes part of the

legend. the genius of just running it once on the super bowl. every news show was saying, the game was ok, but did you see the commercial? our vision was more like how the world was going to change because of computers, not that we were changing the super bowl. but it did create a phenomenon where people started designing advertising specifically for the uper bowl. and keeping it secret. and having it be a surprise. all those things were born out of 1984. trying to live up to what steve expected of what i did and we were doing together became one of the true joys of my life. to be in the advertising business you don't often get to be part of something that important, that world changing