Supporters of individual liberty and national sovereignty have been skeptical of the United Nations, and with good reason. With the support of statists such as George Soros, the U.N. pushes for crazy ideas such as global taxation and global currency.
But there’s another international bureaucracy, also funded by American tax dollars, that is even more pernicious. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has the same leftist ideology as the U.N., but it actually has some ability to change policy.
As you can imagine, this always means bigger government and more statism. Here are some examples.
- The OECD has an anti-tax competition project designed to prop up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states.
- The OECD is pushing a “Multilateral Convention” that is designed to become something akin to a World Tax Organization, with the power to persecute nations with free-market tax policy.
- The OECD has endorsed Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”
- The OECD pulled off a hat trick of bad policy in a 2010 document, promoting a value-added tax, Obama’s global warming agenda, and failed Keynesian stimulus.
- The OECD endorsed Obamacare policies, as I explain in this video.
- The OECD even advocates higher taxes when nations are in the middle of economic crisis.
- The OECD also is pushing for higher taxes in Latin America, based on the odd notion that those nations should copy Europe’s failed welfare states.
With this dismal track record, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the Paris-based bureaucracy has a new propaganda initiative that seeks to bolster a left-wing redistribution agenda. And as part of this new scheme, it has put together numbers that supposedly show that there is more poverty is the United States than there is in bankrupt and backwards nations such as Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and Turkey.
This isn’t April 1, and I’m not joking. Here’s a chart, produced from the data at this OECD website, which you get to by clicking the “Poverty: Country comparisons” link on this OECD webpage.
You may be wondering whether the bureaucrats at the OECD who put together these numbers are smoking crack or high on crystal meth. Well, they certainly can afford lots of drugs since they get tax-free salaries (just like their counterparts at other international bureaucracies), but these numbers are the not the result of some ketamine-fueled binge.
Instead, the OECD is lying. The website refers to “poverty rate” and “poverty threshold” and “poverty measure,” but the OECD is not measuring poverty. Instead, they have concocted a new – and deliberately misleading – set of data that instead measures the distribution of income.
And if you’re wondering where they got this crazy idea, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that this is a scheme developed by the Obama Administration and it is designed so that “poverty” is only reduced if incomes become more equal, not if poor people become better off.
Even moderates such as Robert Samuelson recognize this is absurd, and here is some of what he wrote.
…the new definition has strange consequences. Suppose that all Americans doubled their incomes tomorrow, and suppose that their spending on food, clothing, housing and utilities also doubled. That would seem to signify less poverty — but not by the new poverty measure. It wouldn’t decline, because the poverty threshold would go up as spending went up. Many Americans would find this weird: People get richer but “poverty” stays stuck.
The most amazing thing about this crazy approach is that it makes it seem as if America has more poverty than nations such as Bangladesh, even though the average “poor” American has much higher living standards than all but the wealthiest people in the developing world.
And it also generates the laughable numbers in the OECD dataset, showing that Turkey and Portugal have less poverty than the United States.
The main thing to understand, though, is that this new approach is part of an ideological campaign to promote bigger government and more redistribution. Which is very much consistent with the OECD’s overall agenda, as this video explains.
The real outrage is that American taxpayers finance the lion’s share of the OECD budget, even though it is a hard-left organization that pushes policies that are contrary to U.S. interests.
And this is why I wrote that defunding the OECD is a minimal test of fiscal seriousness for lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Now what does OECD stand for again?
Organization for the Endorsement of Complacency and Decline ?
Organization of Excellence Contraction and Decline ?
Organization for the Encouragement of Complacency and Decline ?
Organization of Endeavor Curtailment and Decline ?
Organization for the Extinguishment of Competition and Decline ?
Organization for the Enrichment of Civil-servants and Decline ?
Organization of Enticement Curtailment and Decline ?
Organization of Effort Curbing and Decline ?
Organization of Excellence Curtailment and Decline ?
Organization of Efficiency Cutting and Decline ?
The “decline” ending remains in all variations because that is the terminal fate of Western World voter lemmings – and the politicians they elect to sell them snakeskin oil shortcuts to prosperity.
Reminds me of the Dr. Evil from the past demanding a $1 million ransom for not blowing up the world and everybody laughing at him. What nonsense.
[...] Financial Times reports that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is reflexively supportive of bigger government and more intervention, has endorsed eurobonds. Mr Hollande…won backing from the OECD, which in its twice-yearly [...]
[...] OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or [...]
[...] OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or [...]
[...] With support from left-wing international bureaucracies such as the OECD, the Obama White House wants to rig the poverty numbers to justify even more redistribution. Rate [...]
[...] OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or [...]
[...] And the claim about less poverty is laughable. I’m guessing the author naively relied upon the slipshod analysis from the statists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Those bureaucrats put together a moving-goalposts measure of income distribution and falsely categorized it as a tool for measuring p…. [...]
[...] Porter got much of his information from the OECD. Dan Mitchell describes the OECD thusly….. [...]
[...] To get your blood boiling, read this horrifying post about how a left-wing international bureaucracy conspiring with the Obama White Hous… to redefine poverty in ways that make America look bad. Rate this:Share [...]
[...] statists at the OECD put together a ranking asserting that poverty is a bigger problem in the United States than in Greece, Portugal, or [...]
[...] statists at the OECD put together a ranking asserting that poverty is a bigger problem in the United States than in Greece, Portugal, or [...]
[...] statists at the OECD put together a ranking asserting that poverty is a bigger problem in the United States than in Greece, Portugal, or [...]
Poverty can be “relative” or “absolute.” According to the World Bank, “poverty” is purchasing power of less than $1.25/day. If we used that, then a lot of starving, homeless folk would not be considered “poor.” Similarly, what is an acceptable standard of living in one country is a scandal in another. In the middle ages, the wealthiest lacked running water, indoor toilets, and electricity. Would you call them “poor”? Today, you can’t get a job or function in society without electricity, baths with running water, and even an internet connection. In the early 1980s, owning your own PC was the height of luxury. “Relative” poverty refers to RELATIVE to one’s own society. How do you measure that? How do you define that? 1/2 the median income has been widely accepted as an internationally comparable relative measure of poverty, so you are comparing apples to apples, instead of to oranges.
[...] And the claim about less poverty is laughable. I’m guessing the author naively relied upon the slipshod analysis from the statists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Those bureaucrats put together a moving-goalposts measure of income distribution and falsely categorized it as a tool for measuring p…. [...]
[...] And the claim about less poverty is laughable. I’m guessing the author naively relied upon the slipshod analysis from the statists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Those bureaucrats put together a moving-goalposts measure of income distribution and falsely categorized it as a tool for measuring p…. [...]
[...] OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or [...]
[...] I’m particularly nauseated by the OECD’s support for value-added taxes and their ridiculous assertion that poverty is higher in America than Greece or Turkey. [...]
[…] OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or […]