U.K. Election Week, Part V: A Tory Landslide for Brexit and Beyond

I was very surprised by the 2016 election in the United States, but I didn’t have a rooting interest, so I watched the results mostly for reasons of morbid curiosity.

Because of my support for Brexit, by contrast, I was intensely interested in the results of yesterday’s election in the United Kingdom.

So you can imagine my joy when the BBC announced at 10:00 last night that Boris Johnson and the pro-Brexit Conservative Party were going to win a landslide.

Here are maps showing the results, as well the seats that changed hands (it’s a parliamentary system, so a party that wins a majority of seats can form a government).

At the risk of oversimplifying, the Conservative Party (the Tories) prevailed because they picked up dozens of working class seats. Like American Democrats (at least in 2016), the Labour Party has been captured by the urban left and lost touch with ordinary people.

But here’s the data that I find most encouraging.

When asked before the election about why they might be worried about a Corbyn government, every single group of voters (even Corbyn supporters!) was concerned that he would spend too much money.

And many of them also were concerned he would damage the economy.

Why is this data encouraging?

Because we’re always told about polls suggesting the people support bigger government. I’m skeptical of these polls because they basically ask voters whether they would like Santa Claus to exist. So it’s not a big surprise the people say they want free things from government.

This data, however, suggests that – when push comes to shove – they understand that freebies aren’t free. As Margaret Thatcher warned, left-wing governments eventually will run out of other people’s money.

Now that Boris Johnson has won and has a big majority, what comes next?

I’m assuming a genuine Brexit will happen (yes, politicians have a nasty habit of doing bad things, but I can’t imagine Johnson engaging in the level of betrayal that would be required to strike a deal for a Theresa May-style Brexit in name only).

So I’ll be watching two other issues.

1. Will Boris become the next Margaret Thatcher? I’ve already fretted that he’s too sympathetic to big government, but hopefully he pursues a pro-market agenda. Lower tax rates and genuine federalism (explained here by the Institute of Economic Affairs) would be a good place to start.
2. Will the U.K. and E.U. agree to a good trade deal? In hopes of avoiding regulatory competition, the European Union doubtlessly wants any future trade deal with the U.K. to be based on regulatory harmonization. That would be very bad news. The U.K. should pursue a pact based on genuine free trade and mutual recognition.

Fingers crossed for good answers to these questions.

P.S. Regarding yesterday’s election, there were some big losers other than the Labour Party. The people who sell property in places such as Monaco, Cayman Islands, Jersey, Bermuda, and Switzerland doubtlessly are disappointed that there won’t be an influx of tax refugees escaping a Corbyn-led government.

U.K. Election Week, Part IV: A Final Edition of Brexit Humor (Hopefully)

Today’s election in the United Kingdom presumably will decide Brexit, more than three years after the British people voted to leave.

• If Boris Johnson wins, the government will honor the results of the 2016 referendum and extricate the United Kingdom from the European Union.
• If the other parties win enough seats to block a Tory majority, they almost certainly will undo Brexit, presumably by setting up a rigged second referendum.

So this is likely my last opportunity to share some Brexit-themed humor.

For today’s collection, we’ll start with a 1990s-era Bird & Fortune skit mocking Tory euroskepticism. Sort of Brexit-themed before Brexit.

Rather reminiscent of this example of British stereotyping.

For those who don’t really understand the ins and outs of Brexit, Europe, and the United Kingdom, here’s a video that’s guaranteed to leave you even more confused.

Next we have a PG-13 song from John Oliver, put together back in 2016 before the referendum.

You’ll notice that the song implies the U.K. would be hurt by leaving, so it’s worth noting that all the “Project Fear” predictions (the IMF being a typical example) were wildly wrong.

The U.K.’s economy has done better than continental Europe since Brexit was approved (in a just world, this would be the source of great embarrassment to the international bureaucracies and establishment voices who preached doom and gloom).

Indeed, the main selling point of Brexit is to enable more prosperity by escaping a slow-growth dirigiste European Union.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to humor. Here’s a French perspective on Brexit.

And here’s some satire from Ireland.

Here’s a joke that’s obviously anti-Brexit, but nonetheless is rather funny and worth sharing.

Since I’m disseminating lots of anti-Brexit humor today, here are some signs from people who presumably are not planning on voting for Boris Johnson.

This young lady is right about free trade, but wrong in thinking that approach requires a supranational government.

Here’s a clever mother-daughter duo.

I don’t know whether this comic is pro-Brexit or anti-Brexit, but he has a clever take on all the indecision that’s existed since the 2016 referendum (and he accurately explains the phony out-but-not-really-out Brexit that Theresa May wanted).

Speaking of indecision, we’ll wrap up with this cartoon that reflects some of the irritation that Europeans must be feeling as they wait to see what will finally happen.

 

If you want to peruse previous examples of Brexit-themed humor, I shared some satire shortly after the referendum in 2016, which included a very clever Hitler video.

I then shared some additional examples of Brexit humor earlier this year, including an amusing video message for the practitioners of Project Fear.

U.K. Election Week, Part III: Remembering Margaret Thatcher

For two simple reasons, I want Boris Johnson to win a clear majority tomorrow in the elections for the British Parliament.

1. He’s not a lunatic socialist, like Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party and the British version of Bernie Sanders.
2. He’s promised a real Brexit, meaning the U.K. escapes a doomed-to-decline, ever-more-dirigiste European Union.

Beyond that, his platform is not terribly exciting for supporters of limited government.

Which makes me all the more nostalgic for Margaret Thatcher, the only good British Prime Minister in my lifetime (just as Ronald Reagan was the only good President in my lifetime).

I’ve previously shared two great videos of Thatcher, one about the real source of government funds and the other about the poisonous ideology of class warfare.

I can’t imagine Boris Johnson giving either speech.

Or making this statement.

Or giving these remarks.

As far as I know, Boris Johnson isn’t hostile to free markets and limited government.

He just doesn’t seem animated by a desire to shrink the public sector.

Thatcher, by contrast, was so sound on such issues that “Thatcherism” is now a term to describe good economic policy.

In a book review for City Journal, Alberto Mingardi celebrates Thatcherism.

Forty years on, Margaret Thatcher’s election as Great Britain’s first female prime minister still looks miraculous. …Right after World War II, Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, overly optimistic about the capacity of government to do great things, laid the foundations of the British welfare state. …The postwar economic consensus was so robust that it became known as Butskellism, since the policies of Rab Butler, the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer from 1951 to 1955, and his Labour predecessor Hugh Gaitskell were indistinguishable. The glory days of interventionism didn’t last, however. By 1979, a third of the British workforce was employed by government, directly or indirectly, yet unemployment continued to rise throughout the 1970s. Inflation rose to double digits, exceeding 25 percent… Thatcher recognized the economic crisis as a failure of politics. She offered a gospel of government retrenchment and individual initiative that sounded outdated. She wanted to make people responsible again for their economic destinies, instead of entrusting their fates to state guidance. This meant denationalizing the British economy. Before Thatcher took office, “privatization” was a word out of science fiction; ten years after she left office, it was a global norm. She changed England and, by changing England, changed the world. …Thatcher aimed to stimulate self-reliance and independence, and she saw these virtues threatened by the culture of passivity that statism engenders. …the British political establishment always looked down on this shopkeeper’s daughter. And yet Thatcher’s defining quality, and the reason why we still speak of Thatcherism, is that she told people things that they didn’t want to hear.

And here are some excerpts about Thatcherism from a column by Roger Bootle for the U.K.-based Telegraph.

No previous British Prime Minister has had an ism named after them. …and if such an ism had been conjured up, it would surely not have been about economics. …“Thatcherism” was both substantial and essentially about political economy. …The main high intellectual influences, coming via Keith Joseph, were from Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. …Baroness Thatcher was ideological by nature. …When she first burst onto the stage it was a time for isms. Domestically, the 1970s had been a period of crisis. At various points, not just the economy but the whole system of democratic government in Britain seemed at the point of collapse. …Baroness Thatcher would have seen her ideological enemy then as “socialism”, which had brought the country low: excessive levels of government spending and taxation, lax financial discipline… Much of it was just the traditional liberal economic agenda, developed in the 19th century – free markets, free trade, competition, a small state, requiring only low levels of taxation, and financial probity. …Saying that this was just a retread of old 19th century liberalism doesn’t convey how radical these ideas were at the time, after decades in which markets were held under suspicion and even in a supposedly capitalist country like the UK, the state’s role in the economy was overwhelming. …there was more to Thatcherism than simply the liberal agenda. Classical liberalism was fleshed out with some more homespun beliefs – in value for money, efficiency, self-reliance, saving and wealth accumulation.

Warms my heart!

Speaking of which, I finally found some video of Margaret Thatcher’s famous line about socialists running out of other people’s money.

Shifting topics, nobody knows with total confidence whether Thatcher would have supported Brexit.

She was sympathetic to the original concept of Europe as a free-trade zone.

But as the free-trade pact began morphing into a pro-centralization supra-national government, she became increasingly hostile.

This video captures some of that skepticism.

For what it’s worth, I’m confident she would have been on the right side and supported Brexit.

I’ll close with an overall assessment of Thatcher’s overall economic record.

We’ll start with the United Kingdom’s score from Economic Freedom of the World.

As you can see, there was a dramatic increase in economic liberty during the Thatcher years.

The scores from EFW, which only exist in every fifth year, don’t exactly coincide with Thatcher’s tenure, but the trend is unmistakable.

Conversations with British experts lead me to state that she had three amazing accomplishments.

1. Radical reductions in tax rates on income, with the top rate falling from 83 percent (98 percent for investment income) down to 40 percent. Unsurprisingly, the rich paid more tax with lower rates, just as happened when Reagan lower the top tax rate.
2. Ending capital controls, meaning that people actually had the freedom to take money out of the country (many supposed experts advised against this liberalization, much as so-called experts advised Erhardt not to remove price controls in post-WWII Germany).
3. Industry privatization, which meant undoing the pure socialist policies that resulted in the nationalization of major industries (gas, telecom, steel, coal, transport, etc) and gave government ownership and control over the means of production.

Her only notable bad policy is that she increased the value-added tax.

I also give Thatcher credit for a better-than-expected record on spending restraint (the same is true for David Cameron), and I also think she deserves praise from helping to bring inflation under control.

To be sure, this simplified assessment only skims the surface. And it doesn’t address “sins of omission,” such as her inability to pare back the the country’s creaky government-run health care system (though she did some incremental reforms, such as internal markets).

Nonetheless, the bottom line is that Thatcher was an amazingly successful Prime Minister. For all intents and purposes, she saved the United Kingdom.

P.S. If you want to see my assessments of American presidents, I’ve looked at Reagan, Clinton, Hoover, Nixon, the second Bush, and Obama.

U.K. Election Week, Part II: Political Humor

I realize the prospect of a hard-core socialist government for the United Kingdom isn’t funny. Nor is it amusing to think that the political class could undo Brexit and leave the country trapped inside a slowly dying European Union.

So many people are in no mood to laugh about what might happen in Thursday’s election.

Nonetheless, here’s some election-themed humor from London.

We’ll start with this modernized version of this classic scene from Love, Actually.

But two can play at this game.

Here’s an ad from a Labour candidate.

The choice at this election… #LoveActually #MerryXmas #Tooting pic.twitter.com/laP589NlMm

— Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (@DrRosena) November 22, 2019

Let’s not forget that there’s another political party, the Liberal Democrats.

Though they are a distant third place.

Unless, of course, pollsters are very creative in how they ask questions.

As is the case in the United States, many voters in the United Kingdom are not happy with their choices.

So this cartoon, featuring Guy Fawkes, who tried – but failed – to blow up Parliament in the early 1600s, makes a lot of sense.

Let’s close with some attention to the major candidates for Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson of the Conservative Party has a reputation for liking the opposite sex (sort of a British version of Bill Clinton).

Which has created some opportunities for amusing satire.

Most of the humor involving Jeremy Corbyn, by contrast, revolves around his statist ideology.

For instance, here’s an Advent Calendar from the Labour Party.

And here’s a look at the future if Corbyn wins the election.

Brits will have free broadband, but maybe not anything else.

Reminds me of this satirical poster from Obama’s 2012 campaign.

U.K. Election Week, Part I: The Threat of Corbynomics

I’m currently in London for discussions about public policy, particularly the potential for the right kind of free-trade pact between the United States and United Kingdom.

I deliberately picked this week for my visit so I also could be here for the British election. As a big fan of Brexit, I’m very interested in seeing whether the U.K. ultimately will escape the slowly sinking ship otherwise known as the European Union.

But the election also is an interesting test case of whether people are willing to vote for socialism. The Brits actually made this mistake already, voting for Clement Attlee back in 1945. That led to decades of relative decline, culminating in a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Margaret Thatcher then was elected in 1979 to reverse Attlee’s mistakes and she did a remarkable job of restoring the British economy.

But do voters understand this history?

We’ll find out on Thursday because they’ll have the opportunity to vote for the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, who is the British version of Bernie Sanders.

And he doesn’t hide his radical vision for state control of economic life. Here’s how the Economist describes Corbyn’s agenda.

…the clear outlines of a Corbyn-led government emerged in the manifesto. Under Labour, Britain would have a larger, deeper state… Its frontiers would expand to cover everything from water supply to broadband to how much a landlord may charge a tenant. Where the state already rules, such as in education or health, the government would go deeper, with the introduction of free child-care for pre-schoolers and a “National Care Service” for the elderly. …The government would spend £75bn on building 100,000 council homes per year, paid for from a £150bn “transformation fund”, a pot of money for capital spending on public services. Rent increases would be capped at inflation. The most eye-catching proposal, a plan to nationalise BT’s broadband operations and then offer the service free of charge… Surviving policies from 2017 include a plan to nationalise utilities, alongside Royal Mail and the rail network, and a range of new rights for workers, from a higher minimum wage to restored collective-bargaining rights. All told, government spending would hit 45.1% of GDP, the highest ratio in the post-war era outside of a recession and more than in Germany… To pay for it all, very rich people and businesses would be clobbered. Corporation tax would rise to 26% (from 19% now), which Labour believes, somewhat optimistically, would raise another £24bn by 2024.

As reported by City A.M., the tax increases target a small slice of the population.

Jeremy Corbyn…is planning to introduce a new 45 per cent income tax rate for those earning more than £80,000 and 50 per cent on those with incomes of £125,000 or more. The IFS…estimates that would affect 1.6m people from the outset, rising to 1.9m people by 2023-24. Labour’s policy would add further burden to the country’s biggest tax contributors, with the top five per cent of income tax payers currently contributing half of all income tax revenues, up from 43 per cent just before the financial crisis.  But the IFS warned the amount this policy would raise was “highly uncertain”, with estimates ranging from a high of £6bn to an actual cost of around £1bn, if the policy resulted in a flight of capital from the UK. Lawyers have previously warned that high net worth individuals are poised to shift billions out of the country in the event of a Corbyn government.

Is that a smart idea?

We could debate the degree to which upper-income taxpayers will have less incentive to be productive.

But the biggest impact is probably that the geese with the golden eggs will simply fly away.

Even the left-leaning Guardian seems aware of this possibility.

The super-rich are preparing to immediately leave the UK if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, fearing they will lose billions of pounds if the Labour leader does “go after” the wealthy elite with new taxes, possible capital controls and a clampdown on private schools. Lawyers and accountants for the UK’s richest families said they had been deluged with calls from millionaire and billionaire clients asking for help and advice on moving countries, shifting their fortunes offshore and making early gifts to their children to avoid the Labour leader’s threat to tax all inheritances above £125,000. …Geoffrey Todd, a partner at the law firm Boodle Hatfield, said many of his clients had already put plans in place to transfer their wealth out of the country within minutes if Corbyn is elected. …“There will be plenty of people on the phone to their lawyers in the early hours of 13 December if Labour wins. Movements of capital to new owners and different locations are already prepared, and they are just awaiting final approval.” …On Thursday, Corbyn singled out five members of “the elite” that a Labour government would go after in order to rebalance the country. …The shadow Treasury minister Clive Lewis went further than the Labour leader, telling the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “Billionaires shouldn’t exist. It’s a travesty that there are people on this planet living on less than a dollar a day.

Some companies also are taking steps to protect shareholders.

National Grid (NG.) and SSE (SSE) are certainly not adopting a wait-and-see approach to the general election. Both companies have moved ownership of large parts of their UK operations overseas in a bid to soften the blow of potential nationalisation. With the Labour manifesto reiterating the party’s intention to bring Britain’s electricity and gas infrastructure back into public ownership, energy companies (and their shareholders) face the threat of their assets being transferred to the state at a price below market value.

The Corbyn agenda violates the laws of economics.

It also violates the laws of math. The Labour Party, for all intents and purposes, wants a big expansion of the welfare state financed by a tiny slice of the population.

That simply doesn’t work. The numbers don’t add up when Elizabeth Warren tries to do that in the United States. And an expert for the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes that it doesn’t work in the United Kingdom.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has told ITV News Labour's manifesto spending and taxation pledges are "colossal" and "not credible".

Read more: https://t.co/9IqX8DFX44 pic.twitter.com/6a8iJUyLWN

— ITV News (@itvnews) November 21, 2019

The bottom line is that Corbyn and his team are terrible.

That being said, Boris Johnson and the current crop of Tories are not exactly paragons of prudence and responsibility.

They’re proposing lots of additional spending. And, as City A.M. reports, Johnson also is being criticized for promising company-specific handouts and protectionist rules for public procurement.

In a press conference today, Johnson promised to expand Britain’s state aid regime once the UK leaves the EU. “We will back British businesses by introducing a new state aid regime which makes it faster and easier for the government to intervene to protect jobs when an industry is in trouble,” a briefing document said. Head of regulatory affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Victoria Hewson said support for state aid was “veiled support for cronyism.” …A spokesperson for the Institute of Directors said: “It’s not clear how these proposals will fit with ambitions of a ‘Global Britain’. The Conservatives must be wary of opening a can of worms on state aid, it’s important to have consistent rules in place to resist the impulse of unwarranted protectionism.” Johnson also promised to introduce a buy British rule for public procurement. …IEA economics fellow Julian Jessop said: “A ‘Buy British’ policy is pure protectionism, and it comes with heavy costs.

Perhaps this is why John O’Connell of the Taxpayers Alliance has a rather pessimistic view about future tax policy. Here are excerpts of a column he wrote for CapX.

Theresa May’s government implemented a series of big state, high tax policies. Promises of no strings attached cash for the NHS; new regulations on net zero; tax cuts shelved and the creation of more quangos. After his surprise non-loss in the election, Corbyn shifted even further to the political left, doubling down on his nationalisation plans. All in all, the 2017 election result was terrible for people who believe in a small state. …A report from the Resolution Foundation found that government spending is rising once again, and likely to head back towards the heights of the 1970s over the coming years. The Conservatives’ recent spending review suggests state spending could be 41.3% of GDP by 2023, while Labour’s spending plans could take it to 43.3%. This compares to the 37.4% average throughout the noughties. Based on the manifestos, Labour are working towards a German-sized state, while the Tories’ plan looks more Dutch. Unsurprisingly we see this mirrored by the tax burden, which at 34.6% of GDP has already reached a fifty-year high. It is likely to increase further. …British taxpayers are presented with something of a Hobson’s choice: Boris Johnson will see taxes increase and spending shoot up, while Jeremy Corbyn has £1.2 trillion worth of unfunded spending rises just waiting to become unimaginable tax hikes for everyone. Whoever you vote for, you’ll get higher taxes, the question is just about how high.

Let’s close by looking at the big picture.

Here’s a chart showing the burden of government spending in the United Kingdom since 1900. I’ve augmented the chart to show the awful trend started by Attlee (in red) and then the positive impact of Thatcher (in green).

You can also see that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did a bad job early this century, followed by a surprisingly good performance by David Cameron.

Now it appears that British voters have to choose between a slow drift in the wrong direction under Boris Johnson or a rapid leap in the wrong direction under Jeremy Corbyn.

Normally I would be rather depressed by such a choice. I’m hoping, however, that Brexit (assuming it actually happens!) will cause Boris Johnson to make smart choices even if he is otherwise tempted to make bad choices.

P.S. Unsurprisingly, Corbyn has been an apologist for thugs and dictators.

Taxation, Benefits, and Relative Prosperity in Finland

I’ve written many columns about Sweden and Denmark over the past 10-plus years, and I’ve also written several times about Norway and Iceland.

But I’ve mostly neglected Finland, other than some analysis of the country’s experiment with “basic income” in 2017 and 2018.

Now, thanks to a very interesting column in the New York Times, it’s time to rectify that oversight. According to the authors, Anu Partanen and Trevor Corson, Finland is a great place with lots of goodies provided by taxpayers.

Finland, of course, is one of those Nordic countries that we hear some Americans, including President Trump, describe as unsustainable and oppressive — “socialist nanny states.”…We’ve now been living in Finland for more than a year. The difference between our lives here and in the States has been tremendous… What we’ve experienced is an increase in personal freedom. …in Finland, we are automatically covered, no matter what, by taxpayer-funded universal health care… Our child attends a fabulous, highly professional and ethnically diverse public day-care center that amazes us with its enrichment activities and professionalism. The price? About $300 a month — the maximum for public day care, because in Finland day-care fees are subsidized for all families. …if we stay here, …College would also be tuition free. If we have another child, we will automatically get paid parental leave, funded largely through taxes, for nearly a year… Compared with our life in the United States, this is fantastic.

Interestingly, the authors are not clueless Bernie Sanders-style leftists.

They fully understand and appreciate that Finland (like all Nordic nations) is not a socialist country.

…surely, many in the United States will conclude, Finnish citizens and businesses must be paying a steep price in lost freedoms, opportunity and wealth. …In fact, a recent report by the chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset Management came to a surprising conclusion: The Nordic region is not only “just as business-friendly as the U.S.” but also better on key free-market indexes, including greater protection of private property, less impact on competition from government controls and more openness to trade and capital flows. …What to make of all this? For starters, politicians in the United States might want to think twice about calling the Nordics “socialist.” …in Finland, you don’t really see the kind of socialist movement…, especially around goals such as curtailing free markets and even nationalizing the means of production. The irony is that if you championed socialism like this in Finland, you’d get few takers. …a 2006 study by the Finnish researchers Markus Jantti, Juho Saari and Juhana Vartiainen demonstrates…throughout the 20th century Finland remained — and remains to this day — a country and an economy committed to markets, private businesses and capitalism.

This is a very accurate assessment. Finland is more market-oriented than the United States in many categories.

Moreover, the country is ranked #21 for economic freedom out of 162 nations in Economic Freedom of the World, with a score of 7.80. That’s just .05 behind Taiwan and .09 behind Chile.

That being said, the burden of taxes and spending is rather onerous.

…after World War II, …Finnish capitalists also realized that it would be in their own long-term interests to accept steep progressive tax hikes. …the nation’s commitment to providing generous and universal public services…buffered and absorbed the risks and dislocations caused by capitalist innovation. …Visit Finland today and it’s obvious that the much-heralded quality of life is taking place within a bustling economy of upscale shopping malls, fancy cars and internationally competitive private companies. …Yes, this requires capitalists and corporations to pay fairer wages and more taxes than their American counterparts currently do.

The column concludes by suggesting that American capitalists follow the same model.

Right now might be an opportune moment for American capitalists to pause and ask themselves what kind of long-term cost-benefit calculation makes the most sense.

So should the United States copy Finland, as the authors suggest?

People would get lots of taxpayer-financed freebies, but there would be a heavy price. Taxes consume nearly 50 percent of an average family’s income (even higher according to some measures).

That’s compared to about 30 percent in the United States.

And there’s a very Orwellian aspect of the Finnish tax system. As the New York Times reported last year, everyone in the country has the right to know how much income you earn.

Pamplona can boast of the running of the bulls, Rio de Janeiro has Carnival, but Helsinki is alone in observing “National Jealousy Day,” when every Finnish citizen’s taxable income is made public at 8 a.m. sharp. The annual Nov. 1 data dump is the starting gun for a countrywide game of who’s up and who’s down. …Finland is unusual, even among the Nordic states, in turning its release of personal tax data — to comply with government transparency laws — into a public ritual of comparison. …A large dosage of Thursday’s reporting concerned the income of minor celebrities… The country’s best-known porn star, Anssi “Mr. Lothar” Viskari, was reported to have earned 23,826 euros (about $27,000).

Given the onerous level of Finnish taxes, it’s probably safe to say that “Mr. Lothar” is getting screwed more than he’s…um….well, you get the point.

So what’s the bottom line? Should America be more like Finland? Is the country reasonably successful because of high taxes, or in spite of high taxes?

The U.S. should not mimic Finland, at least if the goal is higher living standards. Finland has some advantages over the United States (including better business taxation), but the United States has more overall economic liberty.

And that presumably helps to explain why, based on data from the Organization for economic Cooperation and Development, the average American enjoys 40 percent higher living standards than the average Finn.

But the most compelling piece of data, for those who prefer apples-to-apples comparison, is that Americans of Finnish descent produce 47 percent more than Finns in Finland.

Is Finland a relatively rich nation? Yes.

Is Finland a relatively free nation? Definitely.

Is Finland a good example of western civilization? Unquestionably.

The bottom line is that Finland seems like a great country (I’ve never visited). All I’m saying is that Americans would not be as prosperous if we had Finnish-style taxation and Finnish-style spending.

P.S. Researchers at Finland’s central bank seem to agree with my concern.

P.P.S. And Finland’s former Prime Minister understood the downside of an excessive public sector.

A Quiz to Identify Your Ideological Perspective

Since I’m an out-of-the-closet libertarian with a track record of more than 5000 columns, there’s not much mystery about my philosophical outlook.

However, knowing my weakness for this kind of thing, a reader sent me an online “Political Sextant Quiz” and I naturally couldn’t resist.

Some of the questions were easy.

For instance, I know we shouldn’t abolish wages since that would be an extreme version of price controls. So “disagree” was the only sane answer.

Likewise, it’s a no-brainer (at least for me) to answer that I want government limited to core public goods (though fire services easily could be privately provided).

Other questions were harder to answer.

For instance, what does “my culture” mean in this next question, and what does it mean to say I “support those of my culture”?

Lacking any additional information, I interpreted this first question to be about my view on western civilization (rule of law, individual rights, etc), which I like. On the other hand, liking my culture doesn’t mean I want to reflexively put one of my neighbors “over” someone else.

So I opted for “slightly agree.”

And I gave the same answer for the second question because capitalism has produced immense material prosperity, yet “more than enough” implies that additional economic growth would be meaningless.

Needless to say, I wasn’t really happy with these questions.

The ambiguous wording left me wondering whether my answers would be interpreted the wrong way (such as being opposed to additional levels of production)?

But when I clicked to get my score, I was largely satisfied.

Since I want to get rid of 90 percent of government, it makes sense that I’m 90 percent anarcho-capitalist. I’ve never been sure what it means to be a bleeding-heart libertarian compared to a regular libertarian, but 88 percent seems reasonable. And I got my highest grade, 92 percent, for minarchism, which seems to a good description of my actual position.

Anyhow, here’s the link to the Political Sextant Quiz. See if you like your results.

And if you want to do more of this kind of thing, I’ve shared several other quizzes over the past decade.

• The Political Compass test (I’m a “right libertarian”).
• The Definitive Political Orientation test (I’m a “right libertarian”).
• The Circle test (I’m a “minarchist”).
• The Libertarian Purity test (I’m a “hard-core libertarian”).
• The 8 Values test (I’m a “libertarian capitalist”).
• The world’s smallest political quiz (I’m a “100-percent libertarian”).
• The 5-dimensional quiz (I’m a “conservative libertarian total-isolationist nationalist traditionalist”).