The Scottish Version of Great Moments in Human Rights

Redistribution is a bad idea primarily because of economics.

People getting handouts have less incentive to be productive and people paying taxes to finance that spending have less incentive to be productive.

That translates into less economic output, which means lower living standards.

But there’s another reason to be concerned about redistribution. I worry that it erodes societal capital (i.e., the traits such as work ethic, self reliance, etc, that are associated with successful societies).

What happens, for instance, when politicians convince people that have a “human right” to other people’s money?

It would be very difficult to be optimistic about a society where most people have that mindset.

This is why I’m very pessimistic that there will ever be a meaningful economic rebound in nations such as Greece and Argentina.

Simply stated, too many people thing they have a right to government-provided goodies. Which means, of course, that they think they have the right to live off the labor of others.

Let’s look at an example.

Remy Tumin reports in the New York Times that Scottish politicians have decided that there is a human right to tampons and sanitary pads.

Period products are now free to anyone in Scotland who needs them, nearly two years after the country’s Parliament approved a landmark piece of legislation. The initiative makes Scotland the first country in the world to provide free sanitary products, part of a global effort to end “period poverty”… The 2020 legislation in Scotland came on the heels of an earlier law that provided free access to tampons and sanitary pads in schools, colleges, universities and other public buildings. …People can find the nearest location with free period products through a mobile app… Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws that require free access to period products for students.

As an economist, I’m irked that the story keeps referring to “free.”

Period products will still have a cost. All that’s happening is that taxpayers are paying instead of users.

I’m also dismayed (but not surprised) that there is no discussion about the potential impact of “third-party payer.” In all likelihood, producers will take advantage of this new entitlement by increasing prices.

But the most depressing part of the story is that this idea seems quite popular. So what comes next? Well, food is even more important to human existence, so why not make food “free” as well?

That’s a recipe for creating a nation filled with people like Obama’s Julia and Biden’s Linda.

And Margaret Thatcher warned us where that leads.

P.S. Here are some other not-so-great moments in human rights.

• In Canada, there’s now a right to be an employed alcoholic.
• Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development asserts there is a right to “emotional support animals” in college dorms.
• In Finland, broadband access is a basic right.
• In France, it is against the law to say your husband is under-endowed or that your wife is fat.
• There’s now an entitlement for free soccer broadcasts in Europe.
• In Italy, you have the right to…um…your testicles.
• Both the United Nations and the Obama Administration think there’s a right to taxpayer-financed birth control.
• In the United States, the elderly have the right to taxpayer-financed sex-change operations.
• There’s even a right to a “special accommodation” if you’re a pee-shy worker in America.

P.P.S. Today’s column revolves around the battle between what some call “positive” and “negative” rights and liberties.

Economics Humor

Yesterday’s column was rather depressing, focusing on the expansion of a corrupt internal revenue service.

To make matters worse, that IRS expansion is part of a larger package of new taxes and more spending.

So let’s offset that bad news with some economics humor.

Since the Biden-Manchin-Schumer legislation includes a big back-door tax increase on companies (the provision targeting “book income“), that’s a perfect segue to our first item about taxation and incentives.

The Biden-Manchin-Schumer legislation isn’t just about misguided tax increases.

It also contains lots of new spending.

Which is why this list from the Babylon Bee is very appropriate.

Next, most of the world’s major nations are dealing with rising prices.

Why?

Because central banks around the world dramatically expanded their balance sheets (i.e., created too much money).

So this definition is both timely and accurate.

Speaking of central banks, here’s a little girl pretending to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Except we now have the highest inflation in 40 years, so the fire is doing even more damage.

Per tradition, I saved the best for last. I’ve written many times that being pro-capitalism is not the same as being pro-business.

Well, here’s a helpful algorithm to show the difference between genuine free enterprise and despicable cronyism.

P.S. You can enjoy previous collections of economics humor by clicking here, here, and here.

In the Case of the IRS, Bigger is Not Better

Sadly, Joe Biden’s plan for a bigger IRS is becoming reality. As you might imagine, I’m not happy.

I’m motivated to share the above video, which was part of last week’s episode of The Square Circle, because it galls me to see some writers defend huge budget increases for the internal revenue service while simultaneously overlooking very serious problems.

Such as.

• Scandals at the IRS
• Criminal behavior at the IRS
• Corruption at the IRS
• The truth about the IRS budget
• Partisan behavior at the IRS
• Embracing dishonest numbers at the IRS
• Abuses of power at the IRS

The latest example of IRS sycophancy comes from Paul Waldman of the Washington Post.

Here’s some of what he wrote.

…with the pending passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we may finally begin to turn the tide in a war only one side has been fighting…this is something all Americans should celebrate. …The bill contains nearly $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service… With this bill, it would be able to hire as many as 87,000 new employees…the wealthy and corporations don’t pay their fair share. …Americans don’t mind paying taxes, as long as they believe the system is fair.

It’s not just that Waldman fails to address problems at the IRS. He also is either very misinformed or very dishonest about who pays the lion’s share of income taxes.

For instance, even the IRS freely admits that upper-income taxpayers finance a hugely disproportionate chunk of the income tax burden.

And if he didn’t want to accept data the objects of his affection at the IRS he could peruse numbers from the Tax Foundation. Or rely on data from the Congressional Budget Office.

Sadly, facts don’t matter to some of our friends on the left. Too many of them seem to think government should have first claim on anything taxpayers earn, particularly if they are successful.

The bottom line if that envy and spite should not be guiding principles for taxation.

Let’s close by revisiting Waldman’s column and reviewing his assertion about “three things we should all be able to agree on.”

We need a government. …In order to have a government, we need to collect taxes. …If we’re going to collect taxes, the agency that does it should operate as efficiently and effectively as possible.

To which I respond.

1. We need a government, but not a bloated, ever-expanding leviathan.
2. We need to collect taxes, but we did just fine for more than 100 years with no income tax.
3. An efficient and effective IRS will be far more likely with a simple and honest tax system.

Needless to say, I won’t hold my breath waiting for #3 to happen.

P.S. If today’s topic is too depressing, here’s some IRS-themed humor to hopefully boost your mood.

P.P.S. Mr. Waldman is not the only IRS sycophant.

P.P.P.S. While readers will not be surprised that politicians such as Elizabeth Warren want a bigger and more intrusive IRS. But how many of them realize Trump and his team also were bad on this issue?

Mitchell’s Law and Insulin Prices

The central message of “Mitchell’s law” is certainly not something I concocted.

Economists and other policy experts have known for a couple of hundred years that politicians have a tendency to makes mistakes and then use the resulting damage as a justification for even more intervention.

I simply gave this phenomenon a name so I didn’t have to offer repeat explanations.

Over and over and over and over again.

Today we’re going to look at another example of politicians demanding more intervention to address a problem caused by previous interventions.

In an article for National Review, Michael Cannon has a very depressing explanation of how government has messed up the market for insulin.

…a proposal by congressional Democrats to mandate that private insurance companies cap out-of-pocket spending on insulin…neglects to address the way the government drives up the cost of insulin. Further intervention would make matters worse. …government makes it both unnecessarily difficult and expensive for diabetics to access this lifesaving drug. …Thanks to government, new insulin is expensive to bring to market. …The high cost of government regulation discourages the development of new insulin products, reduces the number of insulin manufacturers, and increases the prices of any products that do make it through that process… Government increases the cost of insulin by requiring diabetics to get prescriptions before purchasing many insulin products. …Canada generally allows diabetics to purchase any insulin product without a prescription. If the FDA or Congress were to remove those requirements, both the price of insulin and the ancillary costs of obtaining it would fall. …Thanks to government, most people end up with excessive insurance coverage and little awareness of how much things cost. …excessive health insurance encourages providers to increase prices because heavily insured patients care less about price increases.

I’ll augment these observations by explaining that “excessive insurance coverage” refers to how the tax code’s exclusion for fringe benefits leads both employees and employers to use health insurance as a way of not only covering large, unexpected costs, but also as a way of pre-paying for health care.

Unfortunately this pre-payment system has turned much of the health care system into an all-you-can-eat buffet, but with (the perception of) someone else paying the bill.

At the risk of understatement, this system of government-created third-party payer has produced an extraordinarily expensive and inefficient health system.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the column.

So what’s the bottom line? As Cannon explains, the right answer is less government rather than more government.

Had government never intervened in the health sector, private insurance companies might already be offering more comprehensive cost-sharing for insulin than congressional Democrats propose, without driving insulin prices higher. Or perhaps insulin prices would be so low that no one would feel the need to purchase insurance that covers it. All we know for sure is that, like past government interventions, attempts by government to cap cost-sharing for insulin will have unintended consequences that make matters worse for diabetics and all consumers.

P.S. In his column, Cannon observed that, “When Congress capped cost-sharing for contraceptives at $0, prices for hormones and oral contraceptives skyrocketed.”

This is illustrated very clearly by this chart.

As you might expect, deregulation would be the way to lower the cost of birth control (just like deregulation would be the way to lower the cost of insulin).

International Bureaucracies Push for More Poverty in Latin America

Even though they ostensibly exist to promote economic growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have an unfortunate track record of promoting higher taxes and bigger government.

Not that we should be surprised. IMF and OECD officials get very comfortable (and tax-free!) salaries, so they have a “public choice” incentive to reflect the wishes of the politicians who control their purse strings.

But understanding the incentives of international bureaucrats definitely does not mean we should give them a free pass when they push bad policy.

And that’s exactly what the IMF and OECD are doing in Latin America.

Consider, for instance, the new IMF report on “Tax Policy for Inclusive Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean.” The authors (Santiago Acosta-Ormaechea, Samuel Pienknagura, and Carlo Pizzinelli) apparently think those struggling nations will grow faster if there is a bigger burden of government.

…fiscal policy…is not progressive enough… This paper presents a detailed assessment of tax structures in LAC and outlines reform options to improve collection… Specific tax design features are then assessed, inspecting how the taxation of capital and labor can be improved…to both increase revenue and provide a more equitable tax structure… Evidence for LA7 countries shows that better PIT design could bring significant gains in collection and equity. … Potentially adverse growth impacts could be mitigated by providing well-targeted incentives to labor force participation of low-wage earners through an earned income tax credit… Increasing the tax burden on certain non-labor income sources (e.g., capital gains) would also raise PIT revenue and improve equity… Other untapped revenue sources should be considered more forcefully, including the taxation of immovable property, inheritance taxes, and environmental taxes.

As illustrated by Figure 1 from the report, one of the clear messages is that Latin American countries should be more like high-tax countries in Western Europe.

What the authors overlook, however, is that the (relatively) rich countries in Western Europe became rich when the burden of government was very small.

There’s never been a nation, anywhere in the world, or at any point in world history, that became rich by adopting big government.

Now let’s look at what the OECD recommends, as part of “Latin American Economic Outlook 2021: Working Together for a Better Recovery.”

The LEO 2021 provides tailored policy messages to help stakeholders take action and build forward better. …it highlights the need to learn from the pandemic and mainstream some of the social policy innovations adopted throughout the crisis to strengthen social protection systems and improve quality and accessibility of public services. …a set of tax policy options could increase revenues… there needs to be greater resource mobilisation…in most LAC countries, which in turn implies greater progressivity of the taxation system… the average tax-to-GDP ratio in the LAC region was 22.9% in 2019, considerably below the OECD average of 33.8%… Countries may need to consider additional ways of raising revenues… PIT is the principal factor behind the tax gap between LAC and the OECD, limiting not only potential revenues but also the redistributive power of the tax system… taxation of immovable property…and of individuals’ capital gains, should contribute to increasing revenues to finance the recovery and improve the progressivity of the taxation system. Other measures include wealth and inheritance taxes.

Table 1 from the report summarizes the “new social contract” that the OECD is advocating.

All you need to understand is that “strengthening social protection systems and public services” is bureaucrat-speak for more government spending and “developing fairer and stronger tax systems” is bureaucrat-speak for higher taxes and class warfare.

I’ll close by calling your attention to this video explaining the ideal fiscal policy for nations in the developing world.

But remember that fiscal policy is just one piece of the puzzle, so I also recommend this video and this video if you want a full understanding of the policies that are needed to create broadly shared prosperity.

Small Government Is Good Policy…and Good Politics

I’m a policy wonk rather than a political pundit.

But since part of my job is educating politicians, I can’t simply rely on arguments about what’s best for the country.

I also have to convince them that they can enact good policy while also keeping their jobs.

And that’s why I developed my Fourth Theorem of Government back in 2017.

The simple message is that ordinary people enjoy more income if and when politicians make wise policy choices.

And that’s a very effective strategy for winning reelection.

The obvious example is Ronald Reagan, who won a landslide in 1984 even though (or, actually, because) he aggressively fought to reduce the burden of federal spending.

But not everybody agrees with me.

In a column for the Washington Post, Henry Olsen argues that the Republican Party needs to ignore libertarian ideas and embrace activist government.

Many conservatives recognize that attracting a new, diverse, working-class voter base also entails a new, non-libertarian approach to economics. …Liberty-minded intellectuals might rail against widespread government involvement in the economy, but voters like free public education, subsidized health care and generous pensions. …voters…prefer the Scylla of tax increases to the Charybdis of entitlement cuts as aging populations put fiscal pressure on health-care and retirement programs. …The Chips package should serve as a symbol of what government will need to do to reinvigorate an economy that builds things.

I’ll make my main points about taxes and entitlements at the end of the column, but I can’t resist some editorializing on two things from the above excerpt.

First, Henry says voters like free public education. Maybe that’s true, but they seem to like the ultra-libertarian idea of school choice even better.

Second, he argues that the recently enacted Chips law is a role model. But if industrial policy was a good idea, why did Japan stagnate? Why has China’s growth slowed?

Let’s now look at more of the column.

Past Republican efforts to limit the growth of entitlement spending after GOP landslides in 1994 and 2010 backfired politically, helping to reelect presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The fact is that 63 percent of Trump voters care more about keeping Social Security benefits than preventing tax hikes, and 45 percent care more about giving seniors on Medicare what they need than about controlling program costs. …Any serious effort to retain these largely working-class voters — and attract more in the future — must come to grips with these views. …Modern conservatism needs to refine Reagan’s insights and explicitly adopt a theory of when government should act to enhance people’s lives.

My first instinct is to ask for examples of how and when government enhances people’s lives. Or to provide examples of where Reagan thought government did a good job.

That certainly does not seems to fit with Reagan’s message in this video, this video, or the second video from this collection.

Or this video!

But maybe Reagan’s own words were insincere. That seems to be what Olsen thinks since he wrote that “the conservative idol implicitly sanctioned government action if it helped people live dignified lives of their own choosing.”

So let’s forget about words and look at the track record.

What we find is that Reagan was remarkably effective in fighting big government. Indeed, what separates Reagan from every other Republican in recent history is that he successfully fought to constrain the burden of government spending.

But don’t believe me. The data from the Historical Tables of the Budget unambiguously show that Reagan was far better than any other president in the past 50-plus years.

I’ll close by questioning Olsen’s claim that voters prefer tax increases over spending restraint.

I very much suspect that is only the case if they think someone else’s taxes are being increased.

If you don’t believe me, I invite you to look at this polling data from left-wing supporters of Bernie Sanders. And if hard-left voters are not willing to pay more to finance European-sized government, what are the odds that Republican voters are willing to pay more?

Taxing Stock Buybacks: Bad for Workers and Investors

Whenever I discuss the varying types of double taxation on saving and investment (capital gains tax, dividend tax, corporate income tax, death tax, wealth tax, etc), I always emphasize that such levies discourage capital (machinery, tools, technology, etc) which leads to lower levels of productivity.

And lower levels of productivity mean less compensation for workers.

Some of my left-leaning friends dismiss this as “trickle-down economics,” but the relationship between capital and wages is a core component of every economic theory.

Even socialists and Marxists agree that investment is a key to rising wages (though they foolishly think government should be charge of making investments).

I’m providing this background because today’s column explains that politicians made a mistake when they included a tax on “stock buybacks” in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

I’ve written once on this topic, mostly to explain that buybacks should be applauded. They are a way for companies to distribute profits to owners (shareholders) and have the effect of freeing up money for better investment opportunities.

Let’s look at some more recent analysis.

In a column for today’s Wall Street Journal, two Harvard Professors, Jesse Fried and Charles Wang, debunk the anti-buyback hysteria.

A 1% tax on stock buybacks is poised to become law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act just passed by the Senate. This is a victory for critics… But those critics are dead wrong. If anything, American corporations should be repurchasing more stock. Taxing buybacks will increase corporate bloat, lead to higher CEO pay, harm employees and reduce innovation in the economy. …A tax on buybacks will harm shareholders. It creates an incentive for managers to hoard cash, leading to even more corporate bloat and underused stockholder capital. Because CEO pay is tied closely to a firm’s size, this bloating will drive up executive compensation, further hurting investors. …Taxing buybacks will harm employees as well. …Our research shows that 85% of this value flows to employees below the top executive level. Increasing the tax burden will tend to lower equity pay, to the detriment of workers. …A tax that inhibits buybacks will also reduce the capital available to smaller private firms. The cash from shareholder payouts by public companies often flows to private ones, such as those backed by venture capital or private equity. These private firms account for half of nonresidential fixed investment, employ almost 70% of U.S. workers, are responsible for nearly half of business profit, and have been important generators of innovation and job growth. Bottling up cash in public companies will reduce the capital flowing to private ventures—and thus their ability to invest, innovate and hire more workers.

Professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University makes similar points, in a very succinct manner.

This is flat out a new tax on capital, akin to a tax on dividends. …Are you worried about corporations being too big and monopolistic?  This makes it harder for them to shrink!  Think of it also as a tax on the reallocation of capital to new and growing endeavors.

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post is far from a libertarian, but even she warned that the hostility to stock buybacks makes no sense.

You’ve probably heard some ranting recently about “stock buybacks,” the term for when a public company repurchases shares of its own stock on the open market. …Why do Democrats hate buybacks so much? …they proposed legislation to ban buybacks. They excoriated companies for returning cash to shareholders… Share buybacks themselves aren’t necessarily bad — particularly when the alternative is wasting investor money… Yelling at companies to stop their buybacks won’t cause them to increase investment… In fact, some policy measures Democrats are considering, ostensibly to discourage firms from returning so much cash to shareholders, would do the opposite.

The only good news to share is that the tax being enacted by Democrats is just 1 percent, so the damage will be somewhat limited (the main economic damage will be because of another provision in the legislation, the tax on “book income“).

Though I suppose we should be aware that a small tax can grow into a big tax (the original 1913 income tax had a top rate of just 7 percent and we all know that the internal revenue code has since morphed into an anti-growth monstrosity).

The bottom line is that the crowd in Washington has made a bad tax system even worse.

P.S. Since we have been discussing how taxes on capital are bad for workers, this is an opportunity to share an old cartoon from the British Liberal Party (meaning “classical liberal,” of course). The obvious message is that labor and capital are complementary factors of production.

And the obvious lesson is that you can’t punish capital without simultaneously punishing labor. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath waiting for Washington to enact sensible tax policy.

Big Government, Big Business, and the Clowns at the Chamber of Commerce

Supporting free enterprise does not mean supporting big companies.

Why? Because as John Stossel and Tim Carney discuss, big businesses are more than willing to get into bed with big government and oppose capitalism.

The goal should be genuine consumer-driven, market-based competition. And that means that politicians should not put their thumbs on the scale in favor of specific companies or industries.

Unfortunately, that certainly has happened in countless cases.

At varying times, both Republicans and Democrats have provided special favors to Wall Street, General Motors, airlines, health insurance companies, Boeing, Big Pharma, and banks.

These odious examples help to explain why companies give money and support to politicians from both parties.

But sometimes that approach backfires. Let’s consider how the Chamber of Commerce can be blamed for the looming enactment of Biden’s horribly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.

The Wall Street Journal opined on this issue today.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce…bet in 2020 that supporting “centrist” House Democrats would protect against anti-business policies has been a bust. …How does that calculation look now…? Every one of the 15 voted for the $1.9 trillion spending bill in March 2020, despite Chamber opposition to sweeping jobless benefits that stoked labor shortages and stimulus checks that fed inflation. They also voted for the PRO Act, a radical pro-union rewrite of labor law. …Now comes the big moment of truth as the Schumer-Manchin tax and spend bill heads to the House… The chance of Democratic defections is slim. Despite aggressive Chamber lobbying, all 15 rolled over for the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill last year.

Amazingly, the Chamber bent over backwards to endorse these politicians, notwithstanding their consistent track record of support for bigger government.

Nearly all had publicly expressed support for scrapping the 2017 corporate tax reform, and for new climate, banking and healthcare regulations. The only reason most qualified for endorsements is because the Chamber altered its voting scorecard to allow extra points for “leadership” and “bipartisanship.” …It’s not too much to say that the Chamber was crucial in midwifing Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 222-211 seat majority.

The Washington Post wrote last year about the Chamber’s controversial decision to side with Democrats.

Here are some excerpts from the story by Tory Newmyer and Aaron Gregg.

 …the Chamber has been the object of sharp attacks by leading conservatives. …The decision to endorse so many freshman Democrats, rather than give them time for their voting records to take shape, was a dramatic break from past procedure. …the conservative backlash has led to alarm even among some of the organization’s closest allies. A veteran U.S. Chamber board member, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal, said: “It is a legitimate question how well-thought out this strategy is. People are concerned, and they’re discussing where else they can send revenues to support free enterprise.” …Seeing Chamber-endorsed Democrats support pro-union legislation “is like the national right to life organization saying they now support some abortions,” said a former U.S. Chamber executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person feared reprisal.

If you want examples of conservative hostility, here’s a tweet from Hugh Hewitt.

The ⁦@USChamber⁩ opposes President Biden’s massive tax hikes. Too bad none of the Democrats they supported over GOP candidates last year care. The whole management team should quit or be fired. They got played. Badly. https://t.co/Cty77pXgjV

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) April 1, 2021

And here’s a tweet from Oren Cass.

One of the major recent developments in American politics is the nasty divorce underway between the Republican Party and conservatives on one side and the Chamber of Commerce and big business on the other. What's causing the breakup? 🧵

— Oren Cass (@oren_cass) November 15, 2021

Interestingly, this is not the first time the Chamber of Commerce has sided with the left.

In a column for National Review earlier this year, Nate Hochman recounts what happened during the Hillarycare fight back in 1993.

In March 1993, the Chamber of Commerce surprised many of its allies by coming out in favor of Clinton’s plan for universal coverage with an employer mandate, reversing its earlier opposition to both proposals. …The Chamber’s attempt to curry favor with the new administration provoked a furious conservative backlash. Congressional Republicans — led by John Boehner of Ohio, then the head of the 75-member House Conservative Opportunity Society — organized a mass boycott of the Chamber, urging local and state chapters to disaffiliate in protest. The campaign was devastatingly effective: By the time the dust had settled, the Chamber had lost one-fifth of its membership.

As far as I’m concerned, any business owners who favor free enterprise should not support the Chamber of Commerce. It would be heartwarming to see the organization lose members.

But this brings me back to what I wrote at the start of today’s column. Many business owners don’t support capitalism. They prefer cronyism.

That’s particularly true for large companies, which often see big government as a way of thwarting competition from small companies (such as Amazon’s support for a higher minimum wage).

P.S. The Chamber of Commerce is not the only business association governed by fools. Yes, I’m referring to the Business Roundtable.

Government Intervention Hurts the Poor

A big argument for free enterprise over statism is that the former delivers growth while the latter leads to stagnation.

And that’s very apparent when you review decades of data.

The case for capitalism is especially powerful if you care about what’s best for the disadvantaged. As the chart from Economic Freedom of the World illustrates, poor people enjoy much higher levels of income in nations that have higher levels of economic liberty.

So why, then, do our friends on the left support bigger government?

There are several possible answers, but today let’s focus on their understandable desire to do things that seem compassionate. Particularly things that seem to offer immediate help.

I think that’s a big reason why some well-meaning leftists support a big welfare state even though there is plenty of evidence that poor people get trapped in dependency. They are so focused on doing something that ostensibly alleviates today’s problems that they do not appreciate the risk of harmful long-run consequences.

This problem is so pervasive that we need to create a new Theorem of Government.

If you want an example of this Theorem, we can look at a story in today’s New York Times.

Reporters Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman document how low-income people are being hurt by inflation and will probably be hurt by what will be needed to curtail inflation.

…data and anecdotes suggest that lower-income households, despite the resilient job market, are struggling more profoundly with inflation. That divergence poses a challenge for the Federal Reserve, which is hoping that higher interest rates will slow consumer spending and ease pressure on prices across the economy. Already, there are signsthat poorer families are cutting back. …The Fed might need to raise interest rates even more to bring inflation under control, and that could cause a sharper slowdown. In that case, poorer families will almost certainly bear the brunt again, because low-wage workers are often the first to lose hours and jobs. …America’s poor have spent part of the savings they amassed during coronavirus lockdowns, and their wages are increasingly struggling to keep up with — or falling behind — price increases.

The story is filled with anecdotes about poor people suffering from inflation.

And, as the above excerpts captures, it has plenty of fretting about how the less fortunate will suffer as the Federal Reserve tries to fix the mess.

But what you won’t find in the story is any acknowledgement that poor people would not be dealing with this hardship if the Federal Reserve had not made the mistake of creating too much liquidity in the first place.

Yet this is the big lesson all of us should learn.

The Federal Reserve wanted to offer short-run help to the economy, motivated in part by a desire to help poor people by propping up the economy during the pandemic.

Yet any short-run help has been swamped by subsequent negative consequences.

And this is not unique. The big lesson from the so-called War on Poverty is that poverty rates suddenly stopped declining. In other words, government tried to help, but wound up doing harm.

P.S. Here are the other 13 Theorems of Government.

• The “First Theorem” explains how Washington really operates.
• The “Second Theorem” explains why it is so important to block the creation of new programs.
• The “Third Theorem” explains why centralized programs inevitably waste money.
• The “Fourth Theorem” explains that good policy can be good politics.
• The “Fifth Theorem” explains how good ideas on paper become bad ideas in reality.
• The “Sixth Theorem” explains an under-appreciated benefit of a flat tax.
• The “Seventh Theorem” explains how bigger governments are less competent.
• The “Eighth Theorem” explains the motives of those who focus on inequality.
• The “Ninth Theorem” explains how politics often trumps principles.
• The “Tenth Theorem” explains how politicians manufacture/exploit crises.
• The “Eleventh Theorem” explains why big business is often anti-free market.
• The “Twelfth Theorem” explains you can’t have European-sized government without pillaging the middle class.
• The “Thirteenth Theorem” explains that people are unwilling to pay for bloated government.

Big Government, Biden, and Big Corruption: Part II

Yesterday’s column explained that lobbyists are big winners when the size and scope of government increases.

• For instance, a bigger budget means special interests hire lobbyists to obtain ever-larger slices of pork.
• Moreover, added red tape means lobbyists get more clients seeking to manipulate the regulatory process.

And Biden’s grossly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act will make both of those problems worse, enabling more corruption.

But there’s a third problem to consider. Biden’s agenda also calls for a massive expansion of special tax privileges.

From a libertarian perspective, I like when the law allows people to keep more of their money.

As an economist, however, I don’t like when people are lured into make inefficient choices simply because of a convoluted tax system.

And, as a decent human being, I despise a process that enriches lobbyists, politicians, and other insiders. This corrupt process is succinctly captured in this flowchart put together by my former colleague Chris Edwards.

Chris’ main point is that we should be reforming and simplifying the tax code rather than dramatically expanding the budget of a corrupt Internal Revenue Service.

You can’t argue with that goal (assuming you want what’s best for the nation). Even folks on the left should agree.

The bottom line is that a complicated and convoluted tax code is great for lobbyists and a boon for corruption.

P.S. If you want to know the world’s most surprising loophole, click here.

P.P.S. Assuming loopholes are properly defined, the ideal policy is to eliminate them in tandem with enactment of lower tax rates.

Big Government, Biden, and Big Corruption: Part I

Since I went to the archives for a video yesterday, let’s do the same thing today. Here’s my 2009 video about the close link between the size of government and the level of corruption.

I’m recycling this video because President Biden and his allies in Congress are poised to enact a revised version of the “Build Back Better” plan to expand the burden of government.

The legislation has all sorts of awful provisions, such as shoveling more money at a corrupt IRS, hurting jobs with higher taxes on “book income,” price controls on prescription drugs, and green-energy pork.

But today’s column will focus on process rather than policy.

To be more specific, I want to emphasize the video’s message about bigger government leading to more corruption.

And I’m going to cite an unexpected source – a left-leaning news outlet – to make my point.

In an article for the Washington Post, Yeganeh Torbati and Jeff Stein share various examples of how Biden’s misnamed Inflation Reduction Act is fattening bank accounts of lobbyists.

As Democrats hurry to finalize $739 billion climate, health-care and tax legislation…, business lobbyists and issue advocates are…using television and newspaper ads and personal outreach to try to sway Democrats to their side before the Senate votes. Much of the fiercest lobbying has focused on the bill’s health-care provisions. …The bill also provides hundreds of billions…to fight climate change… The Zero Emission Transportation Association…is asking senators to consider extending the deadlines by a year or more… Small businesses successfully stripped higher taxes on pass-through entities, while bigger firms succeeded in keeping the corporate rate at 21 percent.

The story focuses on the battle over the legislation, so allow me to add two points.

• First, fighting over what is in the package is just the tip of the iceberg. Assuming the bill becomes law, there will then be countless opportunities for lobbyists to get rich by manipulating the regulations that will define how the law is implemented, as well as yearly opportunities for lobbyists to cash in by influencing how money is spent.
• Second, not all lobbyists are bad. If a group of people hire lobbyists to get money or favors from the government, that is obviously immoral. But if a group of people hire lobbyists in hopes of protecting themselves (i.e., they don’t want to be taxed or burdened with more red tape), that is completely legitimate.

I’ll close by reiterating a point in the video.

Whether lobbyists are on the right side or wrong side, the ideal scenario is to shrink government. For instance, a simple and fair flat tax would radically reduce the incentive for influence-peddling.

Getting rid of various needless departments (Education, Transportation, Agriculture, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, etc) also would diminish opportunities for graft and sleaze.

P.S. If you want some lobbyist-themed humor, click here and here.

The Case against Confiscatory Tax Rates, Part I

Back in 2009, I narrated a video about the downsides of class-warfare tax policy.

But if you don’t want to spend eight minutes watching the video (or 14 minutes watching this video), here’s a visual that summarizes why high tax rates discourage people from engaging in productive behavior.

The most important thing to understand is that a high marginal tax rate (i.e., the tax rate on earning more money) has a big effect on incentives to work, save, invest, and be entrepreneurial.

But how big is that effect?

Let’s review some new research from Professor Charles Jones.

The classic tradeoff in the optimal income tax literature is between redistribution and the incentive effects that determine the “size of the pie.” …However, what is in some ways the most natural effect on the size of the pie has not been adequately explored. …To the extent that top income taxation distorts…innovation, it can impact not only the income of the innovator but also the incomes of everyone else in the economy. …High incomes are a prize that partly motivates entrepreneurs to turn basic insights into a product or process that ultimately benefits consumers. High marginal tax rates deter this effort and therefore reduce innovation and overall GDP. …For example, consider raising the top marginal tax rate from 50% to 75%. …the change raises about 2.5% of GDP in revenue before the behavioral response. In the baseline calibration…, this increase in the top tax rate reduces innovation and lowers GDP per person in the long run by around 7 percent. …even redistributing the 2.5% of GDP to the bottom half of the population would leave them worse off on average: the 7% decline in their incomes is not offset by the 5% increase from redistribution. In other words, raising the top marginal rate from 50% to 75% reduces social welfare…the rate that incorporates innovation and maximizes the welfare of workers is much lower: the benchmark value is just 9%.

Here’s a table from the study showing how the optimum tax rate is very low if the goal is to help workers and society rather than politicians.

If you want more evidence, there’s a never-ending supply.

But if we want to be concise, start with this list.

• Higher tax rates on the rich will reduce capital formation.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will lower economic output.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will shrink the labor supply.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will depress levels of entrepreneurship.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will lead to lower middle-class wages.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will reduce economic mobility.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will drive away superstar inventors.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will lower levels of innovation.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will lead to higher taxes for everyone else.
• Higher tax rates on the rich will encourage tax complexity.

Heck, higher tax rates can even hurt your favorite sports team.

P.S. Joe Biden wants people to think that it’s patriotic to pay more tax, though he exempts himself with clever tax planning.

The Absurdly Named Inflation Reduction Act

I don’t like shoveling more money at a corrupt IRS, hurting jobs with higher taxes on “book income,” price controls on prescription drugs, or green-energy pork.

But, as explained in this video clip, the insult added to injury is that the resuscitated “Build Back Better” is being sold as the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

If a private company said that candy bars help you lose weight or that it is okay to stick your hand under a running lawnmower, it would be dragged into court for false and/or dangerous advertising.

But when politicians make utterly dishonest claims about legislation, we have to grit our teeth and endure their lies.

The bottom line is that rising prices inevitably are a consequence of bad monetary policy.

That’s true in the United States, and that’s true elsewhere in the world.

So why, then, did Biden, Schumer, and Manchin decide to affix such an inaccurate label to their tax-and-spend package?

The answer presumably is political. Inflation is a problem for the incumbent party, so why not pretend the budget plan will somehow reduce inflation. Heck, if they could get away with it, they would probably call it the “Inflation Reduction and Cancer Elimination Act.”

But, to be fair, perhaps some of them actually believe a big-government plan will have an impact on inflation. For instance, the misguided but honest folks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released an endorsement letter from 55 supposed experts based on the assumption that higher taxes will lead to lower prices.

Here are some excerpts.

With inflation at a 40-year high…, we are writing to encourage you to pass legislation to reduce budget deficits in a manner that would help counter inflation… As President Biden has explained, “bringing down the deficit is one way to ease inflationary pressures.” …Given the current state of the economy, we believe passing deficit reduction would send an important message to the American people that their leaders are serious about tackling inflation.

There are two big problems with the letter.

First, it is based on Keynesian economics, which assumes higher prices are caused by excessive “aggregate demand” and that deficit reduction (whether from tax increases or spending restraint) can help by slowing the economy.

Yet this is the theory that also told us that it was impossible to have rising prices and rising unemployment, like we saw in the 1970s. And Keynesians also said we couldn’t have falling unemployment and falling inflation, like we enjoyed in the 1980s.

Second, even if one believes in the fairy tale of Keynesian economics, all of the alleged deficit reduction occurs in future years.

And even that is nonsense since every sentient adult knows that the massive expansion of the IRS’s budget is not going to generate a windfall of new tax revenue. And every honest person also knows that lawmakers plan on extending the new Obamacare handouts in the bill.

These tweets summarize why even Keynesians should realize the legislation is fraudulent.

And what happens to the 10-year "deficit reduction" when the new Obamacare subsidies are extended after 2 years? Bizarre that NR editorial doesn't hit this point https://t.co/3TUDkEUCyL https://t.co/R86P2rUEbG

— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) August 4, 2022

P.S. It is very disappointing (but perhaps not entirely surprising) that former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed the CRFB letter. And it also is disappointing that a couple of people from the American Enterprise Institute added their names as well. They all deserve the Charlie Brown Award.

P.P.S. As I noted in the video, deficit spending can lead to inflation if a central bank buys government bonds in order to help finance additional government spending (the crazy Modern Monetary Theory agenda). Perhaps I am being too charitable, but I don’t think that’s the reason for the Federal Reserve’s big mistake (though I fear it may be happening with the European Central Bank).

More Evidence against the Capital Gains Tax

The capital gains tax is double taxation, and that’s a bad idea (assuming the goal is faster growth and higher wages).

Let’s consider how it discourages investment. People earn money, pay tax on that money, and then need to decide what to do with the remaining (after-tax) income.

If they save and invest, they can be hit with all sorts of additional taxes. Such as the capital gains tax.

If you want to be wonky, a capital gain occurs when an asset (like shares of stock) climbs in value between when it is purchased and when it is sold.

But stocks rise in value when the market expects a company will generate more income in the future.

Yet that income gets hit by both the corporate income tax and the personal income tax (the infamous double tax on dividends).

So a capital gains tax is a version of triple taxation.

Now that I’ve whined about capital gains taxation, let’s see what happens when a country moves in the right direction.

Professor Terry Moon, from the University of British Columbia, authored a study on the impact of a partial cut in South Korea’s capital gains tax. His abstract succinctly summarizes the results.

This paper assesses the effects of capital gains taxes on investment in the Republic of Korea (hereafter, Korea), where capital gains tax rates vary at the firm level by firm size. Following a reform in 2014, firms with a tax cut increased investment by 34 log points and issued more equity by 9 cents per dollar of lagged revenue, relative to unaffected firms. Additionally, the effects were larger for firms that appeared more cash constrained or went public after the reform. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the “traditional view” predicting that lower payout taxes spur equity-financed investment by increasing marginal returns on investment.

There are several interesting charts and graphs in the study.

But this one is particularly enlightening since we can see big positive results for the firms that were eligible for lower tax rates compared to the ones that still faced higher tax rates.

Richard Rahn wrote about capital gains taxation late last year.

Here are some excerpts from his column in the Washington Times.

Would you vote for a tax that frequently taxes people at an effective rate of 100% or more, misallocates investment, reduces economic growth and job creation, often becomes almost impossible to calculate, and in many cases reduces, rather than increases, revenue for the government? …So-called “capital gains” are price changes most often caused by inflation, which, of course, is caused by incompetent or corrupt governments. …Some countries explicitly allow for the indexing of a capital gain for inflation. Other countries have no capital gains tax at all because they recognize what a destructive tax it is. …The current maximum federal capital gains tax is 23.8%. …“Build Back Better” (BBB) bill would push the top rate to 31.8%…and…citizens of states with high state income tax rates like California, New York, and New Jersey would find themselves paying destructive rates from 43 to 45%.

Needless to say, it is a bad idea to impose a 43 percent-45 percent tax on any type of productive behavior.

But it is downright crazy to impose that type of tax on economic activity (investment) that also gets hit by other forms of tax.

Let’s close with this map from the Tax Foundation. As you can see, some European nations have punitive rates, but countries such as Belgium, Slovakia, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland wisely have chosen not to impose a capital gains tax..

P.S. For more information, I invite people to watch the video I narrated on the topic. And this editorial from the Wall Street Journal also is a good summary of the issue.

P.P.S. Biden wants America to have the world’s worst capital gains tax. To learn why that’s a bad idea, click here and here.

Three Cheers for the Industrial Revolution

At the start of this interview, I cite Economic Freedom of the World and the Index of Economic Freedom to make the point that more economic liberty is correlated with more human prosperity.

For purposes of today’s column, I want to focus on the last half of the interview. I point out that a handful of nations began to escape poverty, largely back in the 1800s, when the fiscal burden of government was very small.

But that’s just a partial explanation. As Professors Donald Boudreaux and Deirdre McCloskey explained in short videos, the adoption of capitalism in a few nations enabled a stunning increase in living standards starting a couple of hundred years ago.

If you want a one-sentence summary, all you need to know is that capitalism enabled the industrial revolution and the industrial revolution triggered a huge increase in living standards.

If you prefer to see this in a visual form, here’s a compelling chart put together by Luke Muehlhauser of the Open Philanthropy Project.

And here’s some of what he wrote on his personal page.

The gains in human well-being observed since the industrial revolution are vastly larger than pre-industrial fluctuations in human well-being. No other transitions in recorded history, either positive or negative, are remotely similar in magnitude. …world GDP per capita (in 1990 international dollars) was relatively flat until the final decades of the industrial revolution, when the trajectory for this measure changed dramatically. …In general, the gains and losses in (these measures of) human well-being during the pre-industrial era are miniscule compared to the gains made during the post-industrial era, and there is a sharp upward trajectory change for all these measures shortly after 1800. …many major historical events seem to have not produced anything close to such a transformative change.

Let’s see what others have to say on this topic.

My former colleague Marian Tupy, in an article for the Foundation for Economic Education, pointed out that living through the industrial revolution was no picnic by today’s standards, but the wealth generated by free markets is what enabled environmental improvements.

It is well known that industrialization helped to pollute the environment, but that does not mean that air and water were clean before factories and mills came along! Compared to today, our ancestors had to endure horrific environmental conditions. …John Harrington invented the toilet in 1596, but bathrooms remained rare luxuries two hundred years later. Chamber pots continued to be emptied into streets, turning them into sewers. To make matters worse, even large towns continued to engage in husbandry well into the 18th century. As Fernand Braudel noted in The Structures of Everyday Life, “Pigs were reared in freedom in the streets. And the streets were so dirty and muddy that they had to be crossed on stilts.” …The situation was no better on the European mainland. …industrialization did great damage to the environment during the second half of the 19th century. But it also created wealth that allowed advanced societies to build better sanitation facilities and spurred the creation of an enlightened populace with a historically unprecedented concern over the environment and a willingness to pay for its stewardship.

Very similar to the issue of child labor.

Market-driven prosperity is what enabled children to go to school rather than being put to work.

In a column for the American Institute for Economic Research, Professor Vincent Geloso of King’s University College looked at new research about the rise of living standards as the United Kingdom went through the industrial revolution.

I began asking my own students about their assessments of the Industrial Revolution. The set of answers I obtained was roughly the same: living standards did not increase for the poor; only the rich got richer; the cities were dirty and the poor suffered from ill-health; the artisans were crowded out; the infernal machines of the Revolution dumbed down workers, etc. In other words, the imagery that seems to have seeped into popular imagination is one that resembles the Marxian version of history… As such, any new research on the topic of living standards during the Industrial Revolution is worth communicating… Two recent articles, published in the European Review of Economic History, that consider living standards in Britain (the cradle of industrialization) during the Industrial Revolution offer such a chance… The first of the two articles, authored by Luis Zegarra, made a series of modifications to the way that wages are deflated. …He made two important findings. The first is that living standards were lower than depicted in previous works of economic history. He found that living standards in London (i.e. a proxy for England) were overestimated by 40%. The second is that the increase in living standards was sustained from 1600 onwards. The second article, authored by Daniel Gallardo-Albarrán and Herman de Jong, decided to go a step further and attempted to measure welfare as broadly defined as possible. …their results…show…the increase started later but there was a pronounced sustained increase. 

P.S. Here’s a video about how industrialization dramatically improved lives in a country that used to be part of Britain.

P.P.S. And here’s another video on the link between free markets and growth.

P.P.P.S. If you want more historical information about the industrial revolution, click here and here.

Learning a Lesson about Big Government from Barbados

I realize few readers are interested in small, faraway countries. But I periodically write about nations such as Jordan, Cyprus, Latvia, Vanuatu, Panama, and Pakistan because they offer important lessons – mostly negative, but sometimes positive – about fiscal policy.

Today, let’s see what we can learn from Barbados.

That island nation in the Caribbean wound up in fiscal trouble a few years ago and Abrahm Lustgarten of the New York Times wrote a lengthy article last week about that experience.

Here’s the situation as of 2018.

Barbados was out of money. It was so broke that it was taking out new loans just to pay the interest on the old ones, even as its infrastructure was coming undone. Soon the nation would have no choice but to declare itself insolvent, instigating a battle with the dozens of banks and creditors that held its $8 billion in debt and triggering austerity measures that would spiral the island into further poverty. …Mottley, the first woman to lead Barbados, had been working…to develop a plan that would restructure the country’s soaring debts in a way that would free up money to invest in Barbados’s economy.

While the preceding excerpts are mostly to illustrate what was happening, I can’t resist two editorial comments.

• First, the right kind of austerity produces growth rather than poverty.
• Second, government spending rarely acts as productive investment.

Now let’s get back to the story.

Prime Minister Mottley’s plan involved going to the International Monetary Fund, then headed by Christine Lagarde, for a bailout.

Mottley knew that banks and investors would work with her only if Barbados were participating in a formal I.M.F. program… Mottley wanted Lagarde to endorse an economic program that would still allow her to raise salaries of civil servants, build schools and improve piping and wiring for water and power. …No one was sure how Lagarde would respond. Would she trust Mottley to spend on Barbados first? …the director’s surprising reply: She was extremely supportive of what Mottley was proposing.

Needless to say, I don’t like bailouts. And a bailout that enables more government spending seems especially foolish.

But I like to check the numbers before making sweeping pronouncements.

And while I am very skeptical of IMF bailouts, I like that the international bureaucracy has an extensive database with economic and fiscal numbers. Including fiscal data for Barbados going back to 1994.

So let’s see whether Barbados somehow was being hurt by inadequate levels of government spending.

But it turns out that total government spending today is more than four times greater than it was in 1994.

And if we look at government spending as a share of gross domestic product, we can see that government has nearly doubled in size.

To be fair to Ms. Mottley, the politicians in office from 1994-2008 were the most profligate.

But none of that changes the fact that government is far bigger today than it was in the recent past. So the notion that Barbados needs a bigger government budget is nonsense.

Sadly, the reporter did not bother to share any of these numbers. Indeed, in a story that ran more than 10,000 words, there were only 50 words that even hinted at the real problem.

…a mixture of poor management and corruption had eroded the country’s economy. …the country had developed a “dysfunctional” fiscal culture in which government agencies and departments took loans and negotiated deals without consulting the central bank, accumulating sprawling debt… The country’s response was to print more money and borrow more.

I’ll close by observing that Barbados never would have gotten into trouble if it had a Swiss-style spending cap. If government spending had been allowed to grow only 3 percent each year starting in 1994, Barbados would be enjoyed a huge budget surplus today.

P.S. Ironically, economists at the IMF have written in favor of spending caps on multiple occasions. Too bad the political hacks in charge of the bureaucracy don’t pay attention to that research.

The Depressing Reincarnation of Build Back Better

One of the best things about 2021 was the fact that Congress did not approve Joe Biden’s economically debilitating plan to raise taxes and expand the welfare state.

His so-called Build Back Better plan was a very bad mix of class-warfare tax policy and redistributionist spending policy.

But one of the worst things about 2022 may be the reincarnation of a slimmed-down version of Biden’s plan.

Simply stated, the “slimmed-down version” of a terrible piece of legislation is bad news – even if it is possible to envision something even worse.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial on the package illustrates why it is bad news that Senator Joe Manchin is trying to rescue Biden’s statist agenda.

As the economy slouches near recession, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin…unveiled a tax-and-spending deal that they call the Inflation Reduction Act. Is their aim to reduce inflation by chilling business investment and the economy? …A more accurate name would be the Business Investment Reduction and Distortion Act since that will be the result of its $433 billion in climate and healthcare spending, and $615 billion in new taxes and drug price-control “savings.”

The editorial highlights four terrible provisions.

First, there’s a big tax hike on American companies, with the biggest tax hike on firms that make new investments.

…the 15% minimum tax on corporate book income…will slam businesses whose taxable income is lower than the profits on their financial statements owing to the likes of investment expensing.

For all intents and purposes, politicians would be creating a second type of corporate income tax.

Heavy compliance costs for the business community, of course, but the rest of us probably care more about the estimated loss of 218,000 jobs according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

Second, there are corrupt “green energy” provisions that will degrade America’s energy efficiency and security.

…the bill’s $369 billion in climate spending, most of which is corporate welfare. …All of this will steer private investment into green energy at the cost of reduced investment in fossil fuels. Wind and solar subsidies are already creating distortions in power markets that make the electric grid less reliable and energy more expensive. The expansion of subsidies will compound these problems.

If you want to know why this is bad, just remember Solyndra.

Third, the legislation imposes back-door price controls on the pharmaceutical industry.

The bill will require the Health and Human Services Secretary to “negotiate” Medicare prices—i.e., impose price controls—for dozens of drugs. But the $288 billion in putative savings are fanciful. Manufacturers will hedge potential future losses by launching drugs at higher prices. …The bill will also discourage investment in innovative treatments that could reduce future healthcare spending.

For those of us who value the development of new drugs to fight problems like cancer and Alzheimer’s, this is very bad news.

Fourth, a very corrupt internal revenue service is rewarded for its bad behavior.

Speculative revenue of $124 billion will also come from an $80 billion boost for the IRS. Most of this will finance more audits. The rich can afford more tax lawyers, but middle and upper-middle class Americans will be inclined to settle IRS claims, however meritless, lest they spend even more to defend themselves.

P.S. I can’t resist sharing one final bit of information.

If you peruse the Joint Committee on Taxation’s analysis of the bill, you’ll find that Joe Biden is breaking his promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year.

Not that anyone should be shocked. I have repeatedly explained that the big spenders need to pillage lower-income and middle-class household if they want to finance bigger government.

Gun Control Humor

Time to add to our collection of humor about gun control.

Back in 2013, I conducted a poll on the most important reason to oppose gun control. The most-common answer was to have the ability to resist government tyranny. Which is the theme of our first item.

The next bit of humor has the same message.

Our third item reminds me of my “IQ test” for criminals.

Next we have a cartoon that combines two hot-button issues.

As is my tradition, I’ve saved the best for last.

And the reason it’s the best is because it is such an accurate depiction of the thinking of our friends on the left.

P.S. Regarding the quiz I mentioned at the start of the column, I think the correct answer is that we should oppose gun control in order to have the ability to protect ourselves in case of societal breakdown.

As we saw most recently at the height of the pandemic, it is unwise to rely on government to protect us during times of crisis.

Heck, governments don’t do a good job of protecting us during times of calm.

The Simple Solution to America’s Horrific Long-Run Fiscal Crisis

Yesterday’s column analyzed some depressing data in the new long-run fiscal forecast from the Congressional Budget Office.

Simply stated, if we leave fiscal policy on auto-pilot, government spending is going to consume an ever-larger share of America’s economy. Which means some combination of more taxes, more debt, and more reckless monetary policy.

Today, let’s show how that problem can be solved.

My final chart yesterday showed that the fundamental problem is that government spending is projected to grow faster than the private economy, thus violating the “golden rule” of fiscal policy.

Here’s a revised version of that chart. I have added a bar showing how fast tax revenues are expected to grow over the next 30 years, as well as a bar showing the projection for population plus inflation.

As already stated, it’s a big problem that government spending is growing faster (an average of 4.63 percent per year) than the growth of the private economy (an average of 3.75 percent per years.

But the goal of fiscal policy should not be to maintain the bloated budget that currently exists. That would lock in all the reckless spending we got under Bush, Obama, and Trump. Not to mention the additional waste approved under Biden.

Ideally, fiscal policy should seek to reduce the burden of federal spending.

Which is why this next chart is key. It shows what would happen if the federal government adopted a TABOR-style spending cap, modeled after the very successful fiscal rule in Colorado.

If government spending can only grow as fast as inflation plus population, we avoid giant future deficits. Indeed, we eventually get budget surpluses.

But I’m not overly concerned with fiscal balance. The proper goal should be to reduce the burden of spending, regardless of how it is financed.

And a spending cap linked to population plus inflation over the next 30 years would yield impressive results. Instead of the federal government consuming more than 30 percent of the economy’s output, only 17.8 percent of GDP would be diverted by federal spending in 2052.

P.S. A spending cap also could be modeled on Switzerland’s very successful “debt brake.”

P.P.S. Some of my left-leaning friends doubtlessly will think a federal budget that consumes “only” 17.8 percent of GDP is grossly inadequate. Yet that was the size of the federal government, relative to economic output, at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

America’s Horrific Long-Run Fiscal Forecast

The Congressional Budget Office has released its new long-run fiscal forecast. Like I did last year (and the year before, and the year before, etc), let’s look at some very worrisome data.

We’ll start with projections over the next three decades for taxes and spending, measured as a share of economic output (gross domestic product). As you can see, the tax burden is increasing, but the spending burden is increasing even faster.

By the way, some people think America’s main fiscal problem is the gap between the two lines. In other words, they worry about deficits and debt.

But the real problem is government spending. And that’s true whether the spending burden is financed by taxes, borrowing, or printing money.

So why is the burden of government spending projected to get larger?

As you can see from Figure 2-2, entitlement programs deserve the lion’s share of the blame. Social Security spending is expanding as a share of GDP, and health entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare) are expanding even faster.

Now let’s confirm that the problem is not on the revenue side.

As you can see from Figure 2-7, taxation is expected to consume an ever-larger share of economic output in future decades. And that’s true even if the Trump tax cuts are made permanent.

Having shared three charts from CBO’s report, it’s now time for a chart that I created using CBO’s long-run data.

My chart shows that America’s main fiscal problem is that we are not abiding by fiscal policy’s Golden Rule. To be more specific, the burden of government is projected to grow faster than the economy.

So long as the burden of government is expanding faster than the private sector, that’s a recipe for higher taxes, more debt, and reckless monetary policy.

All of those options lead to the same bad outcome.

Everything You Need to Know about Federal Handouts for State and Local Governments

Ideally, the federal government should be limited to the functions specified by the Founders in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution.

If we are to have any hope of getting back to that system, it may require two practical steps.

1. If Washington is operating a program, the first step may be to replace it with block grants and let state and local governments decide how to spend the money.
2. If Washington is providing block grants, the second step may be to phase out that funding and let state and local governments figure out if they want to pick up the cost.

To elaborate, programs that are both funded by Washington and operated by Washington not only suffer from waste (common to all government activities), but also produce the inefficiency and stagnation common to a one-size-fits-all approach.

This is why welfare reform under Bill Clinton was a good idea.

Taxpayers saved some money because the block grant was capped. But the best outcome was that states then could use their flexibility to innovate and find approaches that actually helped poor people by encouraging employment and reducing dependency.

In an ideal world, however, there should not be block grants. State and local governments should decide not only how to operate welfare programs, but also how to finance them.

To understand the problems associated with block grants, let’s look at a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Authored by Jeffrey Clemens, Philip G. Hoxie & Stan Veuger, it finds that pandemic grants were grotesquely inefficient.

We use an instrumental-variables estimator reliant on variation in congressional representation to analyze the effects of federal aid to state and local governments across all four major pieces of COVID-19 response legislation. Through September 2021, we estimate that the federal government allocated $855,000 for each state or local government job-year preserved. Our baseline confidence interval allows us to rule out estimates of less than $433,000. Our estimates of effects on aggregate income and output are centered on zero and imply modest if any spillover effects onto the broader economy.

Needless to say, it’s absurd to spend $433,000-$855,000 to save a job that pays an average of $100,000. Or less.

On net, that’s going to reduce total employment when you count the private-sector jobs that are foregone because politicians are diverting so much money from the economy’s productive sector.

And if you want to know how much money was diverted specifically for state and local governments, Figure 3 shows both Trump’s pandemic boondoggle in 2020 and Biden’s pandemic boondoggle in 2021.

In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, Peter Jacobsen discusses the new study.

The authors find that federal aid to state and local governments to save jobs was incredibly ineffective. In fact, this program was even more inefficient than the notoriously inefficient Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). …The PPP was estimated to have cost somewhere from $169,000 to $258,000 per job each year. This program to save state and local government jobs cost in the range of $433,000 to $855,000 per job each year. This is as much as 5x more waste! …So how did the government spend more than $800,000 per job to save jobs which normally pay five figures? …a business engaging in an ineffective and wasteful policy like this would make a loss on each worker and go out of business. …government is particularly prone to generating these wasteful jobs. …Without a mechanism like profit and loss to evaluate the value of alternative options, we are left with a policy which spends nearly a million dollars to preserve a single job with a salary less than one tenth of that.

I’ll conclude with the should-be-obvious observation that politicians don’t actually care about net job creation. They care about buying votes with other people’s money.

So the state and local bureaucrats who directly benefited (by keeping their over-compensated jobs) presumably will remember and reward the politicians who supported for the boondoggles.

P.S. The rest of us also should care – and oppose spendthrift politicians, but most of us don’t pay enough attention to recognize the “unseen.”

Evidence for Lower Corporate Tax Rates, Part III

To begin Part III of this series (here’s Part I and Part II), let’s dig into the archives for this video I narrated back in 2007.

At the risk of patting myself on the back, all of the points hold up very well. Indeed, the past 15 years have produced more evidence that my main arguments were correct.

• Lower corporate rates reduce double taxation
• Lower corporate rates reduce taxes on people
• Lower corporate rates boost worker income
• Lower corporate rates boost competitiveness
• Lower corporate rates generate revenue feedback

The good news is that all these arguments helped produce a tax bill that dropped America’s federal corporate tax rate by 14 percentage points, from 35 percent to 21 percent.

The bad news is that Biden and most Democrats in Congress want to raise the corporate rate.

In a column for CapX, Professor Tyler Goodspeed explains why higher corporate tax rates are a bad idea. He’s writing about what’s happening in the United Kingdom, but his arguments equally apply in the United States.

…the more you tax something, the less of it you get. …plans to raise Corporation Tax and end relief on new plant and machinery will result in less business investment – and steep costs for households. …Treasury’s current plans to raise the corporate income tax rate to 25% and end a temporary 130% ‘super-deduction’ for new investment in qualifying plant and machinery would lower UK investment by nearly 8%, and reduce the size of the UK economy by more than 2%, compared to making the current rules permanent. …because the economic costs of corporate taxation are ultimately borne both by shareholders and workers, raising the rate to 25% would permanently lower average household wages by £2,500. …the macroeconomic effects of raising the Corporation Tax rate to 25% would alone offset 40% of the static revenue gain over a 10-year period, and as much as 90% over the long run.

To bolster his argument for good policy on that side of the Atlantic Ocean, he then explains that America’s lower corporate tax rate has been a big success.

Critics of corporate tax reform should look to the recent experience of the United States… At the time, I predicted that these changes would raise business investment in new plant and equipment by 9%, and raise average household earnings by $4,000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms. …By the end of 2019, investment had risen to 9.4% above its pre-2017 level. Investment by corporate businesses specifically was up even more, rising to 14.2% above its pre-2017 trend in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Meanwhile, in 2018 and 2019 real median household income in the United States rose by $5,000 – a bigger increase in just two years than in the entire 20 preceding years combined. …What about corporate income tax revenues? …corporate tax revenue as a share of the US economy was substantially higher than projected, at 1.7% versus 1.4%.

If you want more evidence about what happened to corporate tax revenue in America after the Trump tax reform, click here.

Another victory for the Laffer Curve.

Not that we should be surprised. Even pro-tax bureaucracies such as the International Monetary Fund and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have found that lower corporate rates produce substantial revenue feedback.

So let’s hope neither the United States nor the United Kingdom make the mistake of undoing progress.

P.S. The specter of a higher corporate tax in the United Kingdom is especially bizarre. Voters chose Brexit in part to give the nation a chance to break free of the European Union’s dirigiste approach. But instead of adopting pro-growth policies (the Singapore-on-Thames approach), former Prime Minister Boris Johnson opted to increase the burden of taxes and spending. Hopefully the Conservative Party will return to Thatcherism with a new Prime Minister (and hopefully American Republicans will return to Reaganism!).

In One Chart, Everything You Need to Know about China

I’m obviously exaggerating when I write an “everything you need to know” column.

But I use that kind of title when sharing a story that highlights some sort of fundamental truth.

And one of my long-standing observations is that China’s economy is not nearly as strong as some people think. Which is why I’m sharing this chart from a recent Bloomberg report about China.

At the risk of understating, it’s good news if rich people want to migrate to your country and it’s bad news if they want to leave your country.

It’s easy to understand why rich people want to leave Russia. Putin is making the country an international pariah.

But look at China, which has the world’s second-largest number of high-net-worth emigrants.

The Bloomberg report, authored by Lisa Du, Amanda Wang, Zheng Li, elaborates on the exodus.

The big question now hanging over China’s rich is whether President Xi Jinping’s government will let them leave. …immigration lawyers say moving has become more difficult in recent months as passport processing times have increased and documentation requirements have become more onerous. Shifting large sums of money out of China has also become harder… That’s setting the stage for a fresh bout of tension between wealthy Chinese and the ruling Communist Party, which was already strained amid President Xi Jinping’s populist campaign for “common prosperity.”

As far as I’m concerned, the underlying issue is that China has been drifting back to authoritarian statism under President Xi

The fact that people and money have been escaping is a symptom of that problem.

Here are some more details.

The potential departures of people and capital are “a definite cost to the Chinese economy,” said Nick Thomas, an associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong… In another sign of the national mood, a recent note from Shanghai-based billionaire Huang Yimeng announcing to employees that he plans to move his family out of China went viral on social media. …Still, “there are lots of institutional barriers” to leaving China, said Jennifer Hsu, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney, Australia… Would-be emigrants also need to get savvier at moving money out of China. Citizens are only allowed to convert $50,000-worth of yuan into foreign currency each year. In the past, wealthier people have found ways around the rule, but some of those options are dwindling.

The bottom line is that the Chinese government presumably can make it more difficult for people to escape.

But that does not solve the underlying problem.

At the risk of oversimplifying is that China was horrendously poor under Mao’s doctrinaire socialism, but then enjoyed some growth after partially liberalizing its economy beginning in the last 1970s/early 1980s..

But there has not been any meaningful pro-market reform in the past 15-20 years and now China is losing ground.

No wonder successful people want to escape.

P.S. Encouraged by bad advice by the OECD and IMF, China has been pursuing bad policy in recent years.

P.P.S. Instead of threatening to invade Taiwan, Xi should by copying its small-government policies (or the pro-market policies of the other Asian Tigers).

P.P.P.S. Given China’s increased influence, I’m also not surprised that many successful people are now escaping Hong Kong.

A Flunking Grade for the Department of Education

Whether I’m debating the quality of government schools or the funding of government schools, I routinely share this chart from the late Andrew Coulson.

There are two obvious takeaways from this data.

1. Taxpayers have been shelling out ever-larger amounts of money.
2. All that money has produced no improvement in student test scores.

Those two takeaways should lead any rational person to conclude that dramatic changes are needed.

Probably the biggest change is school choice. And the good news is that more and more states are moving in the right direction on this issue.

But there’s another potential big change. As illustrated by this tweet (and this story), a former Secretary of the Department of Education thinks it is time to abolish her former bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, we are not seeing any progress on this goal. The bureaucracy’s budget grew dramatically under Trump. And it’s getting even more bloated under Biden.

But maybe there’s hope. Congressman Tom Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky, has legislation to get the federal government out of education. Here’s some of his office’s press release on the topic.

Representative Thomas Massie…has introduced H.R. 899, a bill to abolish the federal Department of Education. The bill, which is one sentence long, states, “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2022.” …said Massie. “States and local communities are best positioned to shape curricula that meet the needs of their students. Schools should be accountable. Parents have the right to choose the most appropriate educational opportunity for their children, including home school, public school, or private school.” The Department of Education began operating in 1980. On September 24, 1981, in his Address to the Nation on the Program for Economic Recovery, President Ronald Reagan said, “…we propose to dismantle two Cabinet Departments, Energy and Education. …There’s only one way to shrink the size and cost of big government, and that is by eliminating agencies that are not needed and are getting in the way of a solution. …education is the principal responsibility of local school systems, teachers, parents, citizen boards, and State governments. By eliminating the Department of Education less than 2 years after it was created, we cannot only reduce the budget but ensure that local needs and preferences, rather than the wishes of Washington, determine the education of our children.”

In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, Patrick Carroll applauds Congressman Massie, along with his cosponsors who have embraced genuine reform.

Though it may be tempting to think Massie and his supporters just don’t care about education, this is certainly not the case. If anything, they are pushing to end the federal Department of Education precisely because they care about educational outcomes. In their view, the Department is at best not helping and, at worst, may actually be part of the problem. …Massie is echoing sentiments expressed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, who advocated dismantling the Department of Education even though it had just begun operating in 1980. …Education needs vary from student to student, so educational decisions need to be made as close to the individual student as possible. Federal organizations simply can’t account for the diverse array of educational contexts, which means their one-size-fits-all findings and recommendations will be poorly suited for many classrooms.

Amen.

From the moment it was created by Jimmy Carter, the Department of Education has failed to generate any positive outcome.

By that metric, it has something in common with the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and almost every bureaucracy in Washington.

P.S. As one might expect, Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Common Core were both expensive failures.

Evidence for Lower Corporate Tax Rates, Part II

Adding to already voluminous research in the area (including studies from Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom), I wrote yesterday about a new study showing that lower corporate tax rates produce more economic growth.

Not that these results should be a surprise.

Anyone with a basic understanding of economics realizes that taxes discourage the activity that is being taxed (something politicians understand when they discuss levies on tobacco).

And the higher the tax, the greater the damage.

Today, let’s revisit the 2017 Trump tax cuts, particularly the reduction in the corporate tax rate.

The International Monetary Fund has published new research on the issue, looking specifically at the impact of cross-border investment. Here are some excerpts from the study, which was written by Thornton Matheson, Alexander Klemm, Laura Power, and Thomas Brosy.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) sharply reduced effective corporate income tax rates on equity-financed US investment. This paper examines the reform’s impact on US inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) and investment in property, plant and equipment (PPE) by foreign-owned US companies. …We find that both PPE investment and FDI financed with retained earnings responded positively to the TCJA reform, but FDI financed with new equity or debt did not. …the increase in PPE investment after TCJA was driven by general economic growth. In regressions of FDI financed with retained earnings, however, tax coefficients were robust to inclusion of macroeconomic controls. As the literature predicts, EATRs have a greater impact on cross-border investment than EMTRs.

These results are interesting, but not overwhelming.

So why am I citing this research?

Because of the following chart, which shows two very important and very desirable results of the 2017 tax bill.

• First, we see lower average tax rates and lower marginal tax rates for the three types of business financing on the right.
• Second, we can see from “EMTR debt finance” on the left that the legislation significantly reduced the tax code’s bias for debt.

Here’s the chart, with the blue bars representing pre-2017 tax rates and the orange bars showing today’s tax rates.

The bottom line is that the 2017 law moved tax policy in the right direction. In a big way.

We got lower rates and moved closer to neutrality.

And I say that as someone who has no problem criticizing some of the other policies we got during that era.

Evidence for Lower Corporate Tax Rates, Part I

Here is the argument why corporate tax rates should be as low as possible.

• High corporate tax rates discourage investment.
• Less investment reduces worker productivity.
• Lower rates of productivity result in lower wages.

In an ideal world, there would be no corporate income tax (or any income tax).

But I’ll gladly accept any movement in the right direction, which is why the reduction in the corporate tax rate was the crown jewel of Trump’s 2017 tax plan.

The bad news is that Biden wants to undo much of that progress.

Today, let’s look at some new academic evidence on the issue. A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, authored by Professors James Cloyne, Joseba Martinez, Haroon Mumtaz, and Paolo Surico, finds that lower corporate rates are especially beneficial for long-run prosperity.

We use…post-WWII U.S. data on output, taxes, productivity and R&D spending to estimate the dynamic effects of income tax changes…and focus on personal and corporate income tax changes separately. …In Figure 1, we present our first set of main results. The figure contains two columns. On the left, we show the IRFs to a reduction in the average corporate tax rate. On the right, we show the results for a reduction in the average personal tax rate. …The first row in Figure 1 reveals that, following a shock to corporate and personal income taxes, the average tax rates decline temporarily. …The second row in Figure 1 shows the impulse response functions for the percentage response of real GDP. … Looking at the first column it is clear that, despite the transitory nature of the corporate tax reduction, there are very persistent effects on real GDP, whose short-run increase of 0.5% persists throughout the ten year period shown in the figure. In other words, the corporate income tax cut has disappeared after 5 years, but the effect on the level of economic activity is still sizable and significant after 8 years. …A similar picture emerges for productivity, as shown in the third row of Figure 1. Both tax rate cuts boost productivity on impact, with the size of the initial response to a personal income tax cut being much larger than for a cut to corporate taxes. On the other hand, the effects of corporate tax cuts grow over time and remain significant even after 10 years.

Here’s the aforementioned Figure 1 from their research.

I’ll conclude by noting that permanent tax cuts are much better than temporary tax cuts.

But if taxes are being cut, regardless of duration, the goal should be to get the most bang for the buck. And there’s plenty of evidence (from the United States, Australia, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom) that lowering corporate tax rates is a smart place to start.

P.S. It’s unfortunate that Biden wants a higher corporate tax burden in the United States. It’s even more disturbing that he wants a global tax cartel so the entire world has to follow in his footsteps. But he apparently does not understand the topic.

More Evidence Against Basic Income

Some people argue the government should give everyone a “basic income.”

The problem with that approach (and the problem with other types of redistribution) is that some people will choose not to work if they can simply rely on handouts from the government.

That’s not good for the overall economy because total output is determined by the quality and quantity of labor and capital being utilized.

Some supporters of basic income claim that basic income would not discourage work.

They point out that giving the handouts to everyone would solve the problem that exists with most forms of redistribution, which is punitive, implicit marginal tax rates if recipients try to become self-sufficient.

It would be great to solve that problem, but I’m skeptical that basic income would be a net positive.

Let’s review some new evidence about no-strings handouts. Allysia Finley of the Wall Street Journal summarized the key findings of some new academic research.

Did pandemic stimulus payments harm lower-income Americans? That’s the implication of a new study by social scientists at Harvard and the University of Exeter. Liberals argue that no-strings-attached handouts encourage better financial decisions and healthier lifestyles. …The Harvard study put this hypothesis to the test and found the opposite.During a randomized trial conducted from July 2020 to May 2021, researchers assigned 2,073 low-income participants to receive a one-time unconditional cash transfer of either $500 or $2,000. Another 3,170 people with similar financial, demographic and socioeconomic characteristics served as a control group. …The top-line result: Handouts increased spending for a few weeks—on average $26 a day in the $500 group and $82 a day in the $2,000 group—but had no observable positive effect on any individual outcome. …Handout recipients fared worse on most survey outcomes. They reported less earned income and liquidity, lower work performance and satisfaction, more financial stress, …and anxiety than the control group.

The main takeaway is that redistribution does not work. It’s bad for taxpayers and it is bad for recipients.

But I fear our friends on the left will not learn any lessons.

These findings contradicted the predictions of 477 social scientists and policy makers the researchers surveyed. That’s not surprising. Most liberal academics and politicians believe government handouts are the solution to all problems. If transfer payments were a ticket to the middle class, the War on Poverty would have succeeded long ago. …It’s no surprise that people who received a large percentage of their monthly income for doing nothing were less motivated to work and less satisfied with their work.

Very true. The so-called War on Poverty certainly showed government is capable of redistributing money.

But it has not produced good results, at least if one values economic independence and self-sufficiency for the less fortunate.

P.S. Ms. Finley’s column also mentioned another study that found a negative link between food stamps and diet quality.

…the study isn’t a one-off in documenting a link between transfer payments and worse outcomes. A 2018 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association examined the diet quality of food-stamp beneficiaries from 2003 to 2014, a period in which average benefits increased more than 50%. Similar low-income people who didn’t get food stamps ate more healthily than those who did. The non-food-stamp group consumed significantly fewer sugar-sweetened beverages, and their diets improved more over time.

P.P.S. Finland experimented with basic income and decided it did not work, while Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected a scheme for universal handouts in their country.

P.P.P.S. Joe Biden expressed skepticism about basic income back in 2017, but that did not stop him from proposing per-child handouts after taking office.

The Case for Entitlement Reform

If Joe Biden’s bungled economic policy is any indication, the GOP may wind up controlling Washington in the not-too-distant future.

If so, I hope Republicans rekindle their interest in the kind of genuine entitlement reform discussed in this interview.

But I’m not sure whether to be optimistic or pessimistic.

On the plus side, the GOP supported pro-growth entitlement reform during the Obama years.

On the minus side, the party largely punted on the issue once Trump took over.

To be sure, punting is the easy route from a “public choice” perspective. Politicians like offering freebies to voters and many voters like getting handouts.

However, that approach means America’s economy is weakened by an ever-growing burden of federal spending and eventually is plunged into fiscal crisis.

And that’s based on the programs that already exist. Joe Biden wants to expand the welfare state with even more entitlements!

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about the downside of making America more like Europe last October.

The result of…expanded entitlements is likely to be reduced incentives to work and invest, slower economic growth, lower living standards, and less fiscal space for essential public goods like national defense. That’s the lesson from Europe’s cradle-to-grave welfare states… Europe’s little-discussed secret is that its cradle-to-grave welfare states are financed by the middle class via value-added and payroll taxes. The combined employer-employee social security tax rate is 36% in Spain, 40% in Italy and 65% in France. Value-added taxes in most European economies are around 20%. There simply aren’t enough rich to finance their entitlements.

Amen. I’ve repeatedly warned that a European-sized welfare state would mean European-sized taxes on lower-income and middle-class Americans.

And what’s remarkable (and discouraging) is that some politicians in the U.S. want to expand entitlements even though many European governments now realize they made big mistakes and need to scale back.

The irony is that some European governments have tried to reform their tax and welfare systems to become more competitive. Germany and Sweden over two decades reformed their welfare and labor policies. …Other European governments are also pushing welfare-state reforms. French President Emmanuel Macron has passed pension reform and cut the corporate tax rate to 26.5% from 33% in 2017… Greece is pulling out of its debt trap with Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s tax, pension and regulatory reforms.

For what it’s worth, I’m happy about these reforms, but I fear many European nations are in the too-little-too-late category.

Why? Because the demographic outlook is deteriorating faster than reform is happening. In other words, most of them are probably destined to suffer Greek-style fiscal crises.

But if (or when) that happens, maybe American politicians will finally wake up and realize we need good reforms to prevent Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from causing a similar collapse on this side of the Atlantic Ocean..

Hopefully that epiphany will take place before it is too late for the United States.

P.S. For those who are interested in the history of fiscal policy, John Cogan of the Hoover Institution wrote about pre-20th-century entitlements earlier this year.

Here are excerpts from his column in the Wall Street Journal.

The history of U.S. entitlements is a 230-year record of continuous expansion… The first major entitlement, Revolutionary War disability benefits, was initially restricted to members of the Continental Army and Navy who were injured in battle and survivors of those killed in wartime. Eligibility was then expanded, first to state militia soldiers, then to veterans whose disabilities were unrelated to wartime service, and eventually to virtually all people who served during the war regardless of disability. Civil War disability pensions followed the same…process, except on a far grander scale. Pensions were initially confined to U.S servicemen who suffered wartime injuries and survivors of those killed in battle. Eventually they were extended to virtually all union Civil War veterans regardless of disability. …Congress followed the same liberalizing process with 20th-century entitlements.

If this excerpt doesn’t satisfy your curiosity, here’s Cogan discussing the topic for 46 minutes.

P.P.S. Not all entitlement reform is created equal.

P.P.P.S. Here an informative chart if you want to know whether to blame defense spending or entitlement spending.

P.P.P.P.S. I always argue in favor of a Swiss-style spending cap, which presumably would force politicians to address America’s entitlement problem.

Wealth Taxation and Economic Suicide

The people of Chile elected a Bernie Sanders-style leftist last December and one of his crazy ideas is a wealth tax. In a discussion with Axel Kaiser, I explain why this destructive levy is misguided.

A wealth tax would be bad news in Chile. It also would be bad news in the United States.

Indeed, there is no country in the world where it wouldn’t be bad news (including Switzerland).

As I noted in the above video clip, an annual tax on wealth is economically akin to a tax on saving and investment.

And the effective tax rate can be confiscatory. Especially when you consider the impact of other taxes, such as dividend taxes, capital gains taxes, and income taxes (and don’t forget the corporate income tax and death tax!).

The chart shows that the severity of the tax varies depending on the rate of wealth tax and the change in the value of a taxpayer’s assets.

And it only includes the impact of the wealth tax and personal income tax.

Yet even with that limitation, it is still very easy to wind up with effective tax rates of more than 100 percent.

You don’t need to be a wild-eyed supply-sider to conclude this will undermine growth by discouraging people from saving and investing.

Daniel Savickas of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance wrote about this unfair and punitive levy earlier this year.

Here are excerpts from his column for Real Clear Markets.

A wealth tax means it would no longer be worthwhile for many to invest in the economy. People invest with the hopes of making money on that investment and accept they will have to pay a percentage on gains once it’s sold off. However, with repeated taxes in the interim just for holding the stock, many investments cease making financial sense. As a result, many startup companies will end up losing access to capital at a critical time. A wealth tax will end up punishing small businesses more so than the super wealthy. …The economy has taken a beating lately and – given recent inflationary trends – does not seem to be getting a break any time soon. Policymakers should be focusing on how to alleviate those pains. A wealth tax would go after the people who take risks and invest their money in our companies and our jobs. This approach would never be helpful, but is especially harmful at a time like this.

The bottom line is that a wealth tax would be very bad news. It would weaken the United States economy. And it would have an even worse impact on Chile’s economy (particularly when combined with Boric’s other bad policies).

P.S. There’s definitely not a libertarian argument for a wealth tax, and I also have explained why there is not a conservative argument for this invasive levy.

Deregulate Birth Control

There are all sorts of reasons to dislike the Food & Drug Administration.

Based on the number of lives lost, the bureaucracy’s foot-dragging on drug approval would be at the top of the list.

Though the FDA’s inefficiencies also resulted in many needless deaths during the pandemic.

And let’s not overlook the other areas where the FDA has a pernicious impact.

But I’m a big believer in redemption. So I’m very hopeful that the bureaucrats will soon do something smart and allow women to purchase birth control pills without first getting a prescription.

One of the reasons I’m hopeful is that some of our friends on the left have sensible views on this issue.

The Washington Post, for instance, recently editorialized in favor of at least partial deregulation.

Paris-based HRA Pharma announced last week that it has applied to the FDA for approval to switch Opill…to over-the-counter use. If approved, it would be the first time Americans would have access to oral contraceptives without the need to obtain a prescription from a health professional. Another pill manufacturer, Cadence Health, has been discussing with the FDA switching its progesterone-estrogen combination to over-the-counter sales in hopes of also submitting an application. …The requirement for a prescription can create barriers for women who don’t have easy access to a health-care provider because of cost, lack of transportation or child care, and privacy and confidentiality concerns. Making the pill available without a prescription could be particularly helpful to women in rural, poor and marginalized communities. Oral contraceptives…are available over the counter in more than 100 countries, and clinical trials have shown them to be safe and reliable. …Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have voiced their support for making birth control pills available without prescription. …it is important that the FDA make this matter a priority.

Needless to say, libertarian-minded people are on the right side as well.

Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education wrote in favor of reducing government intervention.

…whatever one believes about abortion, the timing of a new debate on birth control policy within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) couldn’t be more important. The FDA just received a request from a contraceptive company seeking authorization to sell its birth control pills over-the-counter—without a prescription, as is required nationwide under current laws. …the downsides of government mandates requiring a prescription are significant. For one thing, it makes birth control harder to access for people without health insurance or the time/resources to obtain professional medical care. It also adds significantly to the cost of birth control by introducing middlemen and additional steps. …Studies have shown that, in absence of a required doctor consultation, women are able to self-screen and determine if they meet any of the conditions where one shouldn’t take hormonal birth control. …Dozens of other countries don’t require a prescription for birth control, including Mexico, Portugal, India, Greece, and Brazil. …it’s a matter of who gets to decide. Can women weigh the risks and benefits of a medication and decide for themselves? Or should that decision be made for them by supposedly benevolent bureaucrats and the nanny state?

Brad answers his own question, stating that “the answer is clear” and that the FDA should “get out of the way.”

Amen. Indeed, “get out of the way” should be our attitude about almost every action by politicians and bureaucrats.

I’ll close by making the should-be-obvious point that a belief in deregulated birth control is not the same as a belief in subsidized birth control. Especially when such policies are a recipe for higher costs and corrupt cronyism.