Laughing about Corporate Inversions

There’s lot of criticism of the IRS and the tax code on the Internet. Indeed, I like to think I contribute my fair share.

But I’m surprised at (what I consider to be be) the limited amount of humor on those topics.

As I look through my archives, I can find only a few cartoons about the overall tax code.

Regarding tax reform, all I have is this Barack Obama flat tax that I created.

Here are a few cartoons about tax policy negotiations.

I found a bit more to choose from on the IRS scandal (see here, here, here, here, and here).

And I do have a decent number of cartoons about Obama’s class-warfare tax policy (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

But that doesn’t seem like a lot, particularly since I’ve been blogging since 2009.

So let’s augment the collection with some humor about corporate inversions.

But just like you’re supposed to eat your vegetables before dessert, here’s one bit of serious info before we move to the cartoons.

For those who want to see the Cato Institute in action, here are my remarks about the issue of corporate inversions to Capitol Hill staffers.

If you want to see the full event, which would include the commentary of David Burton and Ike Brannon, click here.

Now that the serious stuff is out of the way, let’s enjoy some laughs.

This Nate Beeler cartoon is my favorite of today’s collection because it correctly implies that the entire U.S. corporate tax code is a festering sore.

Michael Ramirez notes that America is the “king” of the wrong kind of realm.

Here’s a contribution from Dana Summers, who cleverly mocks the grotesque hypocrisy of Warren Buffett.

Chip Bok addresses the same theme in this cartoon.

I can’t resist closing with one additional serious observation. If we don’t like our corrupt tax system, there is a very good solution.

Addendum: I forgot to include this example of death tax humor.

Read Full Post »

A Lower Corporate Rate Is a Practical And Good Response to Inversions

It boggles the mind to think that the United States now has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world.

But it’s even more amazing that America arguably has the most punitive corporate tax rate in the entire world.

Here’s some of what I wrote on the topic for today’s U.K.-based Telegraph.

…the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world (and the highest in the entire world, according to KPMG, if you ignore the United Arab Emirates’ severance tax on oil companies). …The central government in Washington imposes a 35pc rate on corporate income, with most states then adding their own levies, with the net result being an average corporate rate of 39.1pc. This compares with 37pc in Japan, which has the dubious honour of being in second place, according to the tax database of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). …if you broaden the analysis, it becomes even more evident that the United States has fallen behind in the global shift to more competitive corporate tax systems. The average corporate tax for OECD nations has dropped to 24.8pc. For EU nations, the average corporate tax is even lower, with a rate of less than 22pc. And don’t forget the Asian Tiger economies, with Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong all clustered around 17pc, as well as the fiscal paradises that don’t impose any corporate income tax, such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

I also explain that America’s system of “worldwide” taxation exacerbates the anti-competitive nature of the U.S. tax system for companies trying to compete in global markets.

And I warn why making “inversions” illegal is a misguided and self-defeating response.

Blocking inversions…is like breaking the thermometer because you don’t like the temperature. It simply masks the underlying problem. In the long run, the United States will lose jobs and investment because of bad corporate tax policy, regardless of whether companies have the right to invert.

In other words, America desperately needs a lower corporate tax rate.

The crowd in Washington, however, says American can’t “afford” a lower corporate tax rate. The amount of foregone revenue would be too large, they claim.

Yet let’s look at what happened when Canada lowered its corporate tax burden. Here’s a chart prepared by the Tax Foundation.

The Tax Foundation augmented the chart with some important commentary on why companies are attracted to Canada.

Part of the attraction is the substantial tax reforms that occurred over the last 15 years in Canada. First among these is the dramatic reduction in the corporate tax rate, from 43 percent in 2000 to 26 percent today.

What about tax revenue?

The U.S. currently has a corporate tax rate of 39 percent, but lawmakers are reluctant to do what Canada did, i.e. lower the tax rate, for fear of losing tax revenue. …According to OECD data, corporate tax revenue increased following Canada’s corporate tax rate cuts that began in 2000. …Corporate tax revenue as a share of GDP in Canada has averaged 3.3 percent since 2000, while it averaged 2.9 percent over the years 1988 to 2000, when Canada’s corporate tax rate was 43 percent.

My colleague Chris Edwards also reviewed this issue (and he’s a former Canadian, so pay close attention).

Here’s his chart showing the corporate tax rates imposed at the national level by both the U.S. government and the Canadian government.

As you can see, the rates were somewhat similar between 1985 and 2000, with the Canadians having a slight advantage. But then Canada opened up  a big lead over America by dropping the central government tax rate on corporations to 15 percent.

So what happened to corporate tax revenue?

As you can see from his second chart, receipts are very volatile based on economic performance. But the Canadian government is collecting more revenue, measured as a share of total economic output, than the American government.

In spite of having a lower tax rate. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the Canadians are generating more corporate tax revenue because of the lower tax rate.

In other words, the Laffer Curve is alive and well.

Not that we should be surprised. Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute estimate that the revenue-maximizing corporate tax rate is about 25 percent, far below the 39.1 percent rate imposed on companies in the United States.

And Tax Foundation experts calculate that the revenue-maximizing rate even lower, down around 15 percent.

P.S. Don’t forget that when politicians impose high tax burdens on companies, the real victims are workers.

P.P.S. And since America’s corporate tax system ranks below even Zimbabwe, we’re in real trouble.

Read Full Post »

An Italian Doctor Joins the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame

In April of 2013, I introduced a Moocher Hall of Fame to “celebrate” some very odious examples of welfare dependency.

Since that time, I keep thinking that it’s time to do something similar for government bureaucrats. This compilation from last December would be a good place to start, though I’d have to figure out whether to have group memberships so that we could include the bureaucrats at the Patent and Trademark Office who get paid to watch TV, as well as the paper pushers at the Department of Veterans Affairs who got big bonuses after creating secret waiting lists that led to the death of former soldiers.

But if we’re creating a Bureaucrat Hall of Fame, I won’t want to discriminate against foreigners.

The U.K.-based Telegraph reports, for instance, that an unnamed doctor from Italy is a very worthy candidate for this award.

The notorious inefficiencies of Italy’s state sector were laid bare on Thursday as news emerged of a Sicilian doctor who has done just 15 days’ work in the past nine years.

How has he “achieved” this degree of non-work?

…the doctor disappeared off on a university training course, reportedly paid for by taxpayers’ money, when he started work in 2005. Returning to work on October 31, 2008, the doctor immediately asked for, and obtained, paid family leave until May the following year. Then he worked 15 days at the hospital before calling off sick until July 2009. Recovered from illness, the doctor obtained a place on another university training course, once again reportedly swapping his wage for payment from the state university, which lasted until June this year, said wire agency ANSA. The doctor is now allegedly planning more time off to obtain a doctorate which will finish in December 2016.

By the way, our lazy doctor has lots of company. Indeed, Sicily sounds like the California of Italy.

The problem is pronounced in Sicily, where an army of around 144,000 regional staff – both permanent and temporary – includes 26,000 forestry workers, more than in British Columbia in Canada. Around 7,000 Sicilians have been given government jobs teaching work skills to Sicilians without jobs.

With that amount of waste and featherbedding, no wonder Italian taxpayers are beginning to revolt.

Here’s a specific example that boggles the mind.

Red tape on the island has also created surreal working weeks for those employed by the local government. In March, a vet in Trapani complained that the work he was contracted to carry out for the local authority had been spread over a such a long period he was required to do just one minute’s work every week. “Once a week I go to the office and stamp my pass,” said Manuel Bongiorno. “I walk in, wait for a minute to go by, then stamp the pass again. It’s been going on for months,” he added.

I don’t know if “vet” means he’s an animal doctor or a former soldier, but he doesn’t qualify for membership in the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame because he apparently wants to do some work.

That’s preposterous, but what would you expect in a nation where government is so incompetent that the wrong people are appointed to high-level jobs that shouldn’t even exist.

So you can see why I don’t really care which party rules Italy. The names may change at the top, but government always comes out ahead.

Though a New York Times columnist actually wrote that America should become more like Italy. And he wasn’t being satirical. At least not on purpose.

P.S. The U.K. government has raised its terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe.” I realize this is a serious issue, but I couldn’t help but think about the humorous version of European threat levels.

Read Full Post »

Lower Tax Rates vs. Targeted Tax Credits, Part II

I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal last week about the policy debate over whether it’s better to lower tax rates or to provide targeted tax cuts for parents.

Since this meant I was wading into a fight between so-called reform conservatives (or “reformicons”) and traditional conservatives (or “supply-siders”), I wasn’t surprised to learn that not everyone agreed with my analysis.

James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, for instance, doesn’t approve of what I wrote.

…why are some folks on the right against giving middle-class families a big tax cut and letting them keep more of what they earn? …Cato’s Dan Mitchell, in a Wall Street Journal commentary today, concedes Stein’s idea would indeed help middle-class families right now… Yet Mitchell still thinks cutting marginal tax rates is the better idea.

Pethokoukis accurately notes that I want lower marginal tax rates because, from my perspective, faster long-run growth would be even more beneficial to middle-class families.

He disagrees and offers five counter-arguments. Here they are (summarized fairly, I hope), along with my response.

1.) House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp has put forward tax reform with a top rate of 25% vs. 40% today. Yet his plan would likely increase the economy’s size by less than 1% over the next decade, according to the Joint Tax Committee. …This is not to say lower tax rates aren’t good for economic growth. But marginal rates at those levels are almost certainly already deep on the good side of the Laffer Curve.

I have a couple of reactions.

First, the top tax rate in the Camp plan is 35 percent rather than 25 percent, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the plan doesn’t generate much additional growth.

Second, the JCT’s model is flawed and it should not be given credibility by any supporter of good tax policy. The Tax Foundation has a much better model.

Though it doesn’t really matter in this case because the Tax Foundation analysis of the Camp plan also shows a very weak growth response, largely because the slightly lower tax rates in the Camp plan are “paid for” by increasing the tax burden on saving and investment. Which is why I also wrote that the plan was disappointing.

Regarding the point about the Laffer Curve, the Tax Foundation responded to the Pethokoukis criticism of my column by noting “the Laffer Curve refers to tax revenue, not economic growth. It says there is a tax rate at which tax revenue is maximized. The tax rate at which economic growth is maximized is almost certainly well below that.”

Needless to say, I fully agree. I want to maximize growth, not tax revenue.

Now let’s move to his second point.

2.) And consider this: just how would the GDP gains, such as they are, from cutting top marginal rates be distributed in an economy where middle-wage jobs are disappearing and income gains are tilted toward the highly skilled and educated? The US economy needs to grow faster, but faster growth alone in the Age of Automation may not substantially increase living standards for a larger swath of the American people. That reality is a big difference between the 2010s economy and the 1980s economy, one many on the right have yet to grasp. Cranking up GDP growth is necessary but not sufficient.

If I understand correctly, Pethokoukis is saying that faster growth doesn’t guarantee good jobs for everyone.

I don’t disagree with this point, but I’m not sure why this is a criticism of lower marginal tax rates. Isn’t it better to get some extra growth rather than no extra growth?

Now let’s address the third point from the Pethokoukis column.

3.) Mitchell asserts, “Tax-credit conservatives generally admit that child-oriented tax cuts have few, if any, pro-growth benefits.” That’s not true. …expanding the child tax credit would serve as a sort of human-capital gains tax cut for worker creators (also known as families). It might just be nudge enough for financially-stressed families to have another kid… Modern pro-growth policymakers should fret as much about the nation’s birthrate as productivity and labor-force participation rates. …A younger American society with a higher birth rate, helped by a tax code that offsets anti-family government policy, would be more dynamic, creative, and entrepreneurial.

I’m less than overwhelmed by this argument.

Yes, we have a demographic problem, but more population is merely a way of increasing total GDP, not per-capita GDP. And it’s the latter than matters if we want higher living standards.

In his fourth point, Pethokouis notes that both supply-siders and reformicons agree on policies to reduce the tax burden on saving and investment.

4.) To give Mitchell some credit here, he does acknowledge there is more to the conservative-reform tax agenda than the child tax credit.

Since we both agree, there’s no need to rebut this part of the column.

And I don’t think there’s anything for me to rebut in Pethokoukis’ final point.

5.) Let me add that there is more to the conservative reform agenda for the middle class than just tax reform, including regulatory, health care, K-12, and higher-education reform. And there should be more to the supply-side, pro-growth agenda than cutting marginal tax rates, including reducing crony capitalist barriers — such as Too Big To Fail megabank subsidies… American needs more growth, and worker creators (strong families) are just as important to achieving that as job creators (strong companies). Let’s have both.

Since I’m among the first to acknowledge that fiscal policy is only about 20 percent of what determines a nation’s prosperity, this is an area where I’m on the same page as Pethokoukis.

Reformicon Founding Fathers

Indeed, I wrote last year that there’s much to admire about the agenda of the reformicons.

I just think that they don’t have sufficient appreciation for the value of even small increases in long-run growth.

Let’s close by looking at one sentence from some supposed analysis by Matt O’Brien in the Wonkblog section of the Washington Post.

His column is dedicated to the proposition that Republicans are overly fixated on cutting taxes for the rich. That might be a defensible hypothesis, but I doubt O’Brien has much credibility since he misrepresents my position.

 Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute downplays the idea that giving middle-class families more money even helps them, and says Republicans should keep focusing on cutting tax rates.

Just for the record, here’s what I actually wrote about middle-class families in my WSJ piece.

Child-based tax cuts are an effective way of giving targeted relief to families with children… The more effective policy—at least in the long run—is to boost economic growth so that families have more income in the first place. Even very modest changes in annual growth, if sustained over time, can yield big increases in household income. … If good tax policy simply raised annual growth to 2.5%, it would mean about $4,500 of additional income for the average household within 25 years. This is why the right kind of tax policy is so important. …since more saving and investment will lead to increased productivity, workers will enjoy higher wages, including households with children.

Does any of that sound like I’m indifferent to middle-class families? And the first sentence of that excerpt specifically says that the reformicon approach would mean relief to families with kids.

And the entire focus of my column is that supply-side tax policy would be even more beneficial to those households in the long run.

But accurately reporting what I wrote would have ruined O’Brien’s narrative. Sigh.

P.S. I wrote a couple of days ago that France was is a downward spiral because of high-tax statism. A few people have pointed out that French President Francois Hollande has picked a new industry and economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, who famously said that the new 75 percent top tax rate meant that France was “Cuba without the sun.”

Does this change my opinion, these folks have asked. Doesn’t this signal that taxes will start going down?

The answer is no. At best, I think it simply means that Hollande won’t push policy further to the left. But that doesn’t mean we’ll see genuine liberalization and a reduction in the fiscal burden of government.

If you think I’m being pessimistic, just keep in mind this excerpt from a Bloomberg story.

Macron apologized yesterday for his “exaggerated reputation” for free-market thinking.

I hope I’m wrong, but that doesn’t sound like the words of someone committed to smaller government?

Read Full Post »

Inversion Controversy Is about Whether Company Profits Should Flow to Shareholders or Government

Since I’ve been in Washington for nearly three decades, I’m used to foolish demagoguery.

But the left’s reaction to corporate inversions takes political rhetoric to a new level of dishonesty.

Every study that looks at business taxation reaches the same conclusion, which is that America’s tax system is punitive and anti-competitive.

Simply stated, the combination of a very high tax rate on corporate income along with a very punitive system of worldwide taxation makes it very difficult for an American-domiciled firm to compete overseas.

Yet some politicians say companies are being “unpatriotic” for trying to protect themselves and even suggest that the tax burden on firms should be further increased!

In this CNBC interview, I say that’s akin to “blaming the victim.”

While I think this was a good interview and I assume the viewers of CNBC are an important demographic, I’m even more concerned (at least in the short run) about influencing the opinions of the folks in Washington.

And that’s why the Cato Institute held a forum yesterday for a standing-room-only crowd on Capitol Hill.

Here is a sampling of the information I shared with the congressional staffers.

We’ll start with this chart showing how the United States has fallen behind the rest of the world on corporate tax rates.

Here’s a chart showing the number of nations that have worldwide tax systems. Once again, you can see a clear trend in the right direction, with the United States getting left behind.

Next, this chart shows that American companies already pay a lot of tax on the income they earn abroad.

Last but not least, here’s a chart showing that inversions have almost no effect on corporate tax revenue in America.

The moral of the story is that the internal revenue code is a mess, which is why (as I said in the interview) companies have both a moral and fiduciary obligation to take legal steps to protect the interests of shareholders, consumers, and employees.

The anti-inversion crowd, though, is more interested in maximizing the amount of money going to politicians.

Actually, let me revise that last sentence. If they looked at the Laffer Curve evidence (here and here), they would support a lower corporate tax rate.

So we’re left with the conclusion that they’re really most interested in making the tax code punitive, regardless of what happens to revenue.

P.S. Don’t forget that your tax dollars are subsidizing a bunch of international bureaucrats in Paris that are trying to impose similar policies on a global basis.

P.P.S. Let’s end with a note on another tax-related issue.

We’ve already looked at evidence suggesting that Lois Lerner engaged in criminal behavior.

Now we have even more reasons to suspect she’s a crook. Here are some excerpts from the New York Observer.

The IRS filing in federal Judge Emmet Sullivan’s court reveals shocking new information. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry AFTER it knew her computer had crashed and after a Congressional inquiry was well underway. As an IRS official declared under the penalty of perjury, the destroyed Blackberry would have contained the same emails (both sent and received) as Lois Lerner’s hard drive. …With incredible disregard for the law and the Congressional inquiry, the IRS admits that this Blackberry “was removed or wiped clean of any sensitive or proprietary information and removed as scrap for disposal in June 2012.” This is a year after her hard drive “crash” and months after the Congressional inquiry began. …One thing is clear: the IRS has no interest in recovering the emails. It has deliberately destroyed evidence and another direct source of the emails it claims were “lost.” It has been blatantly negligent if not criminal in faiing to preserve evidence and destroying it instead.

Utterly disgusting.

Read Full Post »

Debunking the Sloppy and Inaccurate Economic Argument for Export Subsidies

The Export-Import Bank is noxiously corrupt example of crony capitalism.

It never should have been created. But that’s something we could say about most government programs.

So the real question is how to reverse the damage.

If we reform a big program such as Medicare, you can’t end it overnight. You have to deal with the reality that millions of people have made plans based on government policies. And even if those policies are wrong, you can’t pull the rug out from folks who did nothing wrong.

So it’s important to put in place appropriate and fair transitions when reforming a major program.

But that’s not an issue with the Export-Import Bank. It provides undeserved subsidies to big companies. Those big companies will be just fine without having their snouts in the public trough. The right thing to do, from both a moral and economic perspective, is to shut it down immediately.

Indeed, this should be a test as to whether supposedly pro-taxpayer politicians in Washington understand the critical difference between being pro-business and being pro-market.

But what about the argument that the Export-Import Bank is somehow a win-win for the American economy? I tend to automatically dismiss such claims for the simple reason that all sorts of companies in the private sector would do what the Ex-Im Bank is doing if it really was a money maker.

But with the issue heating up, it would be a good idea to examine this claim more closely. Fortunately, Matt Mitchell (no relation) of the Mercatus Center does an excellent job of explaining the dodgy economics of the Ex-Im Bank is this short video.

In some sense, Matt is channeling Frederic Bastiat, the great French thinker who said that a good economist looks at both direct and indirect consequences of policies (the “seen” and the “unseen”).

Matt shows that the negative indirect impact of the Ex-Im Bank is far larger than any putative benefits generated by handouts to politically well-connected firms.

Just like bailouts, s0-called stimulus, and green-energy programs all look bad when you examine all the costs and benefits.

For more information, I also recommend this superb video on why cronyism is so corrosive.

And if you want a humorous analysis, scroll to the bottom of this post and see what the Kronies have to say about the Ex-Im Bank.

Or just enjoy this Glenn Foden cartoon.

P.S. I shared six jaw-dropping examples of left-wing hypocrisy last month.

But maybe it’s time to create a special Hypocrisy Hall of Fame, because the Wall Street Journal reveals that we another member who would be a shoo-in for the award.

It seems that Warren Buffett was not being terribly sincere or honest when he said people like him should be paying higher taxes.

Now this is awkward for President Obama and Senate Democrats. …Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is expected to help finance Burger King’s  pending acquisition of Canadian doughnut-chain Tim Hortons. The deal will allow Miami-based Burger King to claim Canada as its new legal home for tax purposes. Beltway Democrats had been hoping to use a recent wave of such corporate inversions as a campaign tool. The idea was to propose new taxes on the companies that move. Step two was to beat up Republicans who don’t agree to make the free world’s most punitive corporate tax system even more punitive. But now that Democratic tax hero Mr. Buffett has been spotted surfing on top of this wave, the political challenge has become more difficult.

Sort of makes you wonder whether Buffett endorses higher taxes for the self-interested reason that the political class will then give him a free pass on issues such as the Burger King inversion?

Shocking, just shocking, to think that rich leftists are hypocrites.

Read Full Post »

It Doesn’t Seem Possible, but France Is Going from Bad to Worse

Remember when Paul Krugman warned that there was a plot against France? He asserted that critics wanted to undermine the great success of France’s social model.

I agreed with Krugman, at least in the limited sense that there is a plot against France. But I explained that the conspiracy to hurt the nation was being led by French politicians.

Simply stated, my view has been that the French political elite have been taxing the nation into stagnation and decline and there is every reason to think that the nation is heading toward a severe self-inflicted fiscal crisis.

But it turns out I may have been too optimistic. Let’s look at some updates from Krugmantopia.

We’ll start with a report from the Financial Times, which captures the nation’s sense of despair.

…if the country’s embattled socialist president was hoping for some respite from what has been a testing year, he can probably think again. … the French economy barely expanded during the second quarter of this year after stagnating in the first. …the result will make it all but impossible to achieve the government’s growth forecast for 2014 of 1 per cent… Bruno Cavalier, chief economist at Oddo & Cie, the Paris-based bank, says one reason is the huge constraint on disposable income posed by France’s tax burden, which has risen from 41 per cent of GDP in 2009 to 45.7 per cent last year – one of the highest in the eurozone.

The government has responded by rearranging the deck chairs on the political Titanic.

French President Francois Hollande dissolved the government on Monday after open feuding among his Cabinet over the country’s stagnant economy. …France has had effectively no economic growth this year, unemployment is hovering around 10 percent and Hollande’s approval ratings are sunk in the teens. …Hollande’s promises to cut taxes and make it easier for businesses to open and operate have stalled, in large part because of the divisions among his Socialist party.

For what it’s worth, Hollande’s commitment to tax cuts and deregulation is about as sincere and genuine as my support for the Florida Gators.

After all, he’s the guy who imposed a new top tax rate of 75 percent (which he said was “patriotic”)

And that’s just the personal income tax. When you add other taxes to the mix, you get a system that is so onerous that more than 8,000 households paid more than 100 percent of their income to the French government!

No wonder successful people are escaping to other nations.

By the way, if you’re wondering why Hollande is appointing new people to his government, it’s because some of his ministers were complaining that so-called austerity was inhibiting Keynesian spending policies that would make government even bigger!

Austerity measures being pursued by France and elsewhere in the euro zone are quashing growth, FrenchEconomy Minister Arnaud Montebourg was quoted saying on Saturday… The outspoken minister, a fierce critic of budget austerity, is known for frequent attacks on big business and the European Commission, which he accuses of strangling economic recovery with its prioritization of deficit reduction. …While not as strident as the comments by Montebourg, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin similarly argued for moderated deficit reduction in an interview published in Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “The euro zone is at risk of getting stuck in a spiral of weak or negative growth. We absolutely must slow down the rate of deficit reduction,” Sapin was quoted as saying.

In other words, the French policy debate is between the far left and the crazy left.

Which is why this dour assessment from across the English Channel probably understates the depth of the problem.

Since Francois Hollande was elected President in 2012, French GDP per capita has fallen. Its economy is expected to grow by just 0.7 per cent this year. …the country now looks set for stagnation – with its unemployment rate entrenched above 10 per cent (and youth unemployment double that). …the problems are obvious. The French government accounts for a massive 57.1 per cent of the economy in state spending and transfers. The tax burden is so high at 57 per cent for French employees (the sum of income, payroll taxes, VAT, and social security contributions as a proportion of the gross employment cost)… The World Economic Forum says that France is near the worst performer on a host of measures: positioned 130 out of 148 countries for its regulatory burden, 134 for the tax rates on profits, 135 on cooperation in labour-employer relations, and 144 on hiring and firing practices. …No wonder investors have voted with their wallets. FDI into France is estimated to have fallen by 95 per cent in the last decade.

Wow. No wonder the French people are so glum about the economy, as reported by the EU Observer.

…in France, the eurozone’s second biggest economy, eight percent felt the country’s economy was good. …Only 34 percent feel the jobs crisis has peaked compared with 60 percent who are bracing themselves for a darker economic future.

Which raises a good question. If the French people are so pessimistic about the future, why do they keep electing socialists?!?

Particularly when they tell pollsters they support smaller government!

Last but not least, we have a story from the New York Times about the mind-boggling regulation and protectionism that , mostly because it illustrates the pervasive statism that is strangling France.

Alexandre Chartier and Benjamin Gaignault work off Apple computers and have no intention of ever using the DVD player tucked in the corner of their airy office. But French regulations demand that all driving schools have one, so they got one. Mr. Chartier, 28, and his partner, Mr. Gaignault, 25, are trying to break into the driving school business here… But they are not having an easy time. The other driving schools have sued them, saying their innovations break the rules. …their struggle highlights how the myriad rules governing driving schools — and 36 other highly regulated professions — stifle competition and inflate prices in France.

And what are these rules and regulations, other than the bizarre requirement to own a DVD player?

“The system is absurd,” said Mr. Koenig, who was a speechwriter for Christine Lagarde when she was the French finance minister. …he has been campaigning for changes, including calling for an overhaul of the written test, which he says goes far beyond making sure that a person knows the rules of the road. Instead, he said, it seems intended to trip students up with ridiculous questions, such as: If you run headlong into a wall, would you be safer if you were in a tank or in a car? (The answer: a car, because it has air bags.) …Some studies have concluded that the French are probably paying 20 percent more than they should for the services they get from regulated professions, which include notaries, lawyers, bailiffs, ambulance drivers, court clerks, driving instructors and more. …Francis Kramarz, an economist who has studied the French licensing system, says that barriers to getting a license are so high that about one million French people, who should have licenses, have never been able to get them. …Mr. Kramarz said that it often costs 3,000 euros, or about $3,900, to get a license. But others said the average was closer to 1,500 to 2,000 euros.

Gee, isn’t big government wonderful!

The statists say it helps the less fortunate, but it seems the poor are the ones most hurt by regulations that push the cost of getting a license to $2,000 or above.

P.S. In an uncharacteristic expression of mercy, President Hollande has announced that he wants to limit the fiscal burden so that no taxpayer has to surrender more than 80 percent  of their income to the government.

P.P.S. No wonder Obama will never make America as bad as France, regardless of how hard he tries.

P.P.P.S. Here’s the best-ever cartoon about French economic policy, though this cartoon deserves honorable mention.

P.P.P.P.S. Even the establishment, as indicated by stories in Newsweek and the New York Times (as well as The Economist and the BBC), is noticing that the French economy is dismal.

P.P.P.P.P.S. No matter how much I mock France, there are places in Europe with even worse economic policy.

Read Full Post »

Europe’s Problem Is Excessive Spending, not Austerity

It’s remarkable to read that European politicians are agitating to spend more money, supposedly to make up for “spending cuts” and austerity.

To put it mildly, their Keynesian-based arguments reflect a reality-optional understanding of recent fiscal policy on the other side of the Atlantic.

Here’s some of what Leonid Bershidsky wrote for Bloomberg.

Just as France’s and Italy’s poor economic results prompt the leaders of the euro area’s second and third biggest economies to step up their fight against fiscal austerity, it might be appropriate to ask whether they even know what that is.

An excellent question. As I’ve already explained, austerity is a catch-all phrase that includes bad policy (higher taxes) and good policy (spending restraint).

But with a few notable exceptions, European nations have been choosing the wrong kind of austerity (even though Paul Krugman doesn’t seem to know the difference).

As a result, the real problem of bloated government keeps getting worse.

Government spending in the European Union, and in the euro zone in particular, is now significantly higher than before the 2008 financial crisis. …Among the 28 EU members, public spending reached 49 percent of gross domestic product in 2013, 3.5 percentage points more than in 2007.

Here’s a chart showing how the burden of government spending has become more onerous since 2007.

As you can see, all the big nations of Western Europe have moved in the wrong direction.

Only a small handful of countries in Eastern Europe that have trimmed the size of the public sector.

Bershidsky does explain that the numbers today are slightly better than they were at the peak of the economic downturn, though not because of genuine fiscal restraint.

The spending-to-GDP-ratio first ballooned by 2009, exceeding 50 percent for the EU as a whole, and then shrank a little… That, however, was not the result of government’s austerity efforts: Rather, the spending didn’t go down as much as the economies collapsed, and then didn’t grow in line with the modest rebound.

Here are some examples he shared.

I suppose France deserves a special shout out for managing to expand the size of government between 2009 and 2013. That’s what you call real commitment to statism!

The article also cites an example that is both amusing and tragic, at least in the sense that there’s no genuine seriousness about reforming hte public sector.

Even when spending cuts are made…, the whole public spending system’s glaring inadequacy is not affected. …The ushers at the Italian Parliament, whose job is to carry messages in their imposing gold-braided uniforms, made $181,590 a year by the time they retired, but will only make as much as $140,000 after Renzi’s courageous cut. If you wonder what on earth could be wrong with getting rid of them altogether and just using e-mail, you just don’t get European public expenditure.

I particularly embrace Bershidsky’s conclusion.

There is no rational justification for European governments to insist on higher spending levels than in 2007. The post-crisis years have shown that in Italy, and in the EU was a whole, increased reliance on government spending drives up sovereign debt but doesn’t result in commensurate growth. The idea of a fiscal multiplier of more than one — every euro spent by the government coming back as a euro plus change in growth — obviously has not worked. In fact, increased government interference in the economy, in the form of higher borrowing and spending as well as increased regulation, have led to the shrinking of private credit.  …Unreformed government spending is a hindrance, not a catalyst for growth.

Amen.

Politicians will never want to hear this message, but government spending undermines economic performance by diverting resources from the the economy’s productive sector.

Here’s my video on the theoretical evidence against government spending.

And here’s the video looking at the empirical evidence against excessive spending.

P.S. Other Europeans who have correctly analyzed Europe’s spending problem include Constantin Gurdgiev and Fredrik Erixon.

Read Full Post »

Australia’s Worrisome Fiscal Drift

I’m in Australia for Consilium, an annual conference which is hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies.

I spoke on fiscal policy and pontificated on the need for nations to restrain government spending.

That’s an important message (at least in my humble option), but I thought it was more interesting to learn more about the tax and spending policies of Australia’s current government, which is led by the supposedly right-of-Center Liberal Party (Aussies still use “liberal” in the European sense of classical liberalism).

Unfortunately, I learned that the Australian Liberals (like British Tories) need some remedial work on fiscal policy.

Prime Minister Abbott and his team, for instance, have proposed to increase Australia’s top tax rate. Here’s some of what’s been reported by the Australian Financial Review.

The Abbott government’s deficit tax means top earners will face a 49 per cent marginal tax rate, the eighth ­highest among developed countries. …. Australia already holds one of the highest personal income and company tax rates in the OECD. The 30 per cent corporate tax rate and 45 per cent personal income tax rate are higher than the average of 25.32 per cent for companies and 41.51 per cent for individuals. A personal tax increase will worsen the impact of “bracket creep”. …a higher income tax rate could also make Australia less competitive globally.

And the AFR also reports that a visiting scholar has thrown cold water on the idea of mimicking European fiscal policy.

Professor Prescott, who won the Nobel Prize for ­economics in 2004, …said that at 49 per cent the top marginal tax rate would hurt growth and the government should redouble its efforts to bring down expenditure instead. “It’s too high,” said Professor Prescott, who has written on the negative impact of increased taxes on economic growth in Europe. “You’re killing the goose that lays the golden egg.” …Lamenting “as sad” the standard of public and academic debate over budget deficits – both here and abroad – Professor Prescott said the focus should be on productivity and ­government spending. “What matters is expenditure. To spend is to tax and to tax is to depress.”

So why is an ostensibly right-of-center government copying Obama’s class warfare tax policy?

Beats me, though I’m told it’s because the politicians in Canberra (the nation’s capital) thinks this will appease the left and show “fairness.”

I imagine that strategy will be a flop, just like the first President Bush didn’t win any friends when he capitulated to a tax hike in 1990.

In any event, the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance warns that the tax hike may lose revenue because of Laffer Curve effects.

“The idea of increasing the top marginal tax rate in Australia is unlikely to raise any revenue, and may actually decrease government revenue due to a shrinking in the tax base, as high-income people reduce their labour supply, investment, innovation and tax compliance,” said John Humphreys, the deputy director of the Australian Taxpayers Alliance and an economics lecturer at the University of Queensland. …“Based on mainstream estimates of the high-income elasticity of taxable income, it is fairly straight forward to calculate the tax rate that will raise the maximum amount of revenue, and in Australia that is about 45%. If tax is increased beyond that level, then it is unlikely to raise revenue, and may actually cause a drop in revenue.…” The modeling by Humphreys is due to be published in Policy Journal in the coming months.

I’m skeptical about the finding that the revenue-maximizing rate for the personal income tax is 45 percent, particularly when there is very rigorous analysis suggesting that 20 percent is much closer to the mark.

But I definitely agree that pushing the rate to 49 percent will backfire on the Australian government.

And the folks at the ATA do make the very sound point that politicians shouldn’t try to set the top rate at the revenue-maximizing level regardless.

“There is no logical argument for increasing marginal tax rates about the revenue-maximising level, and indeed there is no good argument for having tax rates anywhere near the revenue-maximising level since those taxes raise very little money but cause significant economic damage.”

Amen. Indeed, allow me to call your attention to some very impressive academic work on this issue.

Now let’s shift to the spending side of Australian fiscal policy.

The good news is that the Abbott government isn’t proposing big increases in the burden of government spending.

The bad news, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be any commitment to a short-term or long-term effort to shrink the public sector.

Here’s a chart, based on IMF data, looking at what’s happened to Australian government spending over the past 20-plus years. The purple-ish line is nominal government spending (left axis) and the blue line is government spending as a share of economic output (right axis).

In the long run, the trend of the blue line is the most important variable.

Unfortunately, the burden of government spending has climbed since the late 1980s. It’s still much lower than the burden of spending in places such as France, but the line is moving in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, if you look at the data since 2000, you could accurately say that Australian policy makers have succeeded in keeping the burden of spending from climbing above 34 percent of GDP (there was some foolish stimulus spending beginning back in 2009, but it didn’t lead to a permanent expansion in the size of government).

But let me share some remarkable data showing Australia’s missed fiscal opportunity. If you look at the IMF’s annual government spending and do the calculations, you’ll find that government spending since 1988 has grown by an average of 6.8 percent each year.

Since nominal GDP also has increased at a good pace, the actual burden of government has “only” risen from about 30 percent to 34 percent of economic output.

But imagine if Australian policy makers had merely imposed some version of Mitchell’s Golden Rule and limited spending so that it grew by, say, 3 percent annually.

If they had engaged in that modest level of fiscal restraint, the burden of the public sector today would be only about half its current size. In other words, government spending in Australia would be less than 17 percent of economic output, which would be even better than Hong Kong and Singapore.

This explains why I’m so fixated on expenditure limitations. You can make big progress over just a couple of decades if politicians somehow can be convinced to restrain the rate of growth of government spending.

Or, as the people of Switzerland figured out, you can enjoy that progress if you impose a spending limit on the politicians.

Read Full Post »

The Federal Bagpipe Police?!?

I’ve shared horror stories about government thuggery and I’ve shared horror stories about government stupidity.

Thanks to Mark Steyn, we have a story that exemplifies both the brain-dead nature of the public sector and the nasty nature of our bureaucratic overlords.

You may have read about the federal milk police. Well, here’s some of what Mark wrote about the Kafkaesque legal regime the federal government maintains for people who want to cross the border with….drugs? no…weapons? no…biological agents? no, nothing like that. We’re talking about  bagpipes.

…17-year-old Campbell Webster and Eryk Bean, of Concord and Londonderry, New Hampshire – understood that if you go to a highland fling a couple of hours north in Quebec you’re now obligated to get your bagpipes approved by US Fish & Wildlife. …So Messrs Webster and Bean got their CITES certificate and presented it to the US CBP agent at the Vermont border crossing. Whereupon he promptly confiscated their bagpipes on the grounds that, yes, their US Fish & Wildlife CITES paperwork was valid, but it’s only valid at 28 ports of entry and this wasn’t one of them. Nor is any other US/Canadian land crossing.

Geesh, those poor kids. Their valuable instruments get stolen by the keystone cops simply because the feds arbitrarily decided that federal government paperwork is only accepted at certain federal government outposts.

By the way, bagpipes apparently get all this unwanted attention because some older instruments have components that are made of ivory, and that’s verboten under environmental laws.

Anyhow, you won’t be surprised to learn that the petty paper pusher who confiscated the bagpipes is also a total jerk.

When the CBP agent seized Messrs Webster and Bean’s bagpipes, he told them – with the characteristic insouciance of the thug bureaucracy – that they were “never going to see them again”. But thanks to the unwelcome publicity the Homeland Security mafiosi were forced to cough ’em up.

But the story doesn’t end here.

The kids apparently are quite the experts with their bagpipes and they’ll be competing in a contest in Scotland.

Mark explains the preposterous steps they’ll have to go through when they return.

The two pipers are now heading to a competition in Scotland. So they’ll be flying back via Boston, which is one of those 28 valid ports of entry. They’ve called Fish & Wildlife to arrange for the mandatory “inspection” of the bagpipes upon landing at Logan Airport. Unfortunately, the official Fish & Wildlife bagpipes inspector is taking a day off that day…she won’t be available to inspect the pipes. So she’s told them they’ll have to drive back to New Hampshire and then drive back to Logan the following day for the Fish & Wildlife bagpipes inspection. So…the bagpipers will have to take a day off on Thursday – just to comply with the diktats of the Department of Paperwork. … Every time you take a bagpipe in and out of the United States it’s a $476* round-trip fee.

Why can’t the bagpipe police simply give them some piece of paper saying their instrument have been deemed kosher? This is sort of like having to apply for a passport each and every time you travel outside America.

And notice that the federal government is charging the kids an inspection fee for the privilege of being harassed!

Sort of like getting an “aviation security fee” added to your airfare to finance the TSA’s patdowns of grandmothers.

Mark has a very dour summary, basically saying that the bagpipe police are a depressing illustration of the loss of freedom to the regulatory state.

Demanding a CITES certificate for bagpipes is a burden upon free-born citizens. Restricting the paperwork’s validity to only 28 ports of entry is an unduly onerous burden. Requiring the bagpipers to come back on the Wednesday to those 28 ports of entry because the inspector’s washing her hair on the Tuesday is an even more onerous and insulting burden. And charging an American $476 to play his bagpipe in Montreal is a shakedown racket unacceptable in a free society. …America is economically sclerotic because it’s being hyper-regulated to death.

P.S. Excerpts from some of my other favorite Mark Steyn columns can be read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

P.S. On a completely separate topic, here’s a brutal example of anti-Obama humor.

Ouch. Sort of like the Obama-Putin humor at the bottom of this blog post.

But I also share Obama humor where I sympathize with the President.

Read Full Post »

Lower Tax Rates > Targeted Tax Credits

Some folks on the right in Washington, generally known as reformicons (short for reform conservatives), want the Republican Party to de-emphasize marginal tax rate reductions and instead focus on providing tax relief to parents.

There are many leaders in this movement and, if you want to learn more about the tax proposals being discussed, I specifically recommend the writings of Robert Stein, James Capretta, James Pethokoukis, Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Charles Blahous, Jason Fichtner, and Reihan Salam (and I’m sure I’m unintentionally leaving off many other worthy contributions).

I explained last year what I like (and don’t like) about reform conservatism, but I haven’t specifically analyzed the tax agenda of the reformicons.

Time to rectify that oversight. The Wall Street Journal was kind enough to give me some space so I could share my thoughts on this topic.

I start by outlining the debate, albeit in simplified form because of space constraints.

There’s a policy debate among conservatives in Washington about the best way to cut taxes and reform the tax code. The supply-siders want to replicate the success of Reaganomics with lower marginal tax rates. But there’s also a camp who call themselves “reform conservatives” who want income tax credits or payroll tax cuts explicitly for the purpose of reducing tax liabilities for middle-class parents. The supply-siders argue that if you want to encourage more work, saving, investment and entrepreneurship, then it is a good idea to reduce marginal tax rates on productive behavior. …Those in the other camp…don’t necessarily disagree with the supply-siders. They note that it was important to lower marginal tax rates in 1980 when the top personal tax rate was a confiscatory 70%. But now that the top rate is “only” about 40%, they argue, lower tax rates won’t deliver nearly as much bang for the buck.

The reformicons are right. Dropping the top tax rate from 40 percent will help the economy, but the pro-growth effect won’t be enormous. At least not compared to what happened during the Reagan years when the top tax rate was slashed from 70 percent to 28 percent.

And, as this leftist cartoon suggests, many Republicans act as if across-the-board tax rate reductions are an elixir for every ill.

But can reformicons suggest a better way of cutting and/or reforming taxes?

I’m not convinced that their agenda of child-oriented tax relief is the right answer.

In my column, I note that many of their policies have already been implemented, yet there’s little if any evidence that these tax cuts have generated positive outcomes.

…reform conservatives say it’s time for new ideas. That’s a nice concept, but Republicans already have enacted many of their proposed policies. The child tax credit was adopted in the 1990s and expanded during the Bush years. The earned income credit also funnels a lot of money (in the form of tax relief or cash payments) to families with children, and that provision also has been significantly expanded over the years. These policies have worked, at least in the sense that households with children now face lower tax liabilities. There is little evidence, though, to suggest positive economic or social outcomes. Were families strengthened? Did the economy grow faster? Did middle-income households feel more secure?

The reformicons often argue that their tax proposals are politically more appealing.

That may be true, but that doesn’t mean they are political winners, particularly if reformicons are trying to appease the class-warfare left, which will simply argue that tax cuts targeted at families making less than, say, $100,000 will be even “fairer” if they are targeted at families making less than $50,000.

Or maybe targeted at households who pay no tax, which means more transfer spending through the tax code!

The tax-credit reformers also argue that their proposals are much less susceptible to class-warfare demagoguery that is the supply-side approach, since tax relief flows to lower- and middle-income voters. …But here’s the downside: Conservatives can bend over backward to appease the class-warfare crowd, but they can never outflank them. …Once conservatives have accepted the left’s premise that tax policy should be based on static distribution tables, they won’t have a ready answer for the left’s gambit.

But as far as I’m concerned, the real issue is how to raise take-home pay.

The reformicons want to make families more secure by reducing how much the IRS takes from their paychecks.

I certainly like the idea of boosting post-tax income, but I contend that it would be even better to focus on policies that increase pre-tax income.

The most commonly cited reason for family-based tax relief is to raise take-home pay. That’s a noble goal, but it overlooks the fact that there are two ways to raise after-tax incomes. Child-based tax cuts are an effective way of giving targeted relief to families with children… The more effective policy—at least in the long run—is to boost economic growth so that families have more income in the first place. Even very modest changes in annual growth, if sustained over time, can yield big increases in household income. … long-run growth will average only 2.3% over the next 75 years. If good tax policy simply raised annual growth to 2.5%, it would mean about $4,500 of additional income for the average household within 25 years. This is why the right kind of tax policy is so important.

In other words, our economy is under-performing and that is the greatest threat to the financial security of families.

Folks on the left say it is the fault of “secular stagnation” and that the burden of government should be further expanded, but both reformicons and supply-siders agree that we’ll get far better results by focusing on tax cuts.

But which tax cuts?

I end my column with some glass-half-full analysis. The reformicons may not be thrilled by lower income tax rates and the supply-siders may not be excited by child-oriented tax cuts, but both camps are quite sympathetic to tax reforms that address the punitive double taxation of income that is saved and invested.

While the camps disagree on lower individual income tax rates vs. child-oriented tax relief, both agree that the tax code’s bias against capital formation is very misguided. The logical compromise might be to focus on reforms that boost saving and investment, such as lowering the corporate tax rate, reducing the double taxation of dividends and capital gains, and allowing immediate expensing of business investment. These reforms would have strong supply-side effects. And since more saving and investment will lead to increased productivity, workers will enjoy higher wages, including households with children.

To be sure, some critics will say this type of tax agenda is too “business friendly,” which is an indirect way of saying that average voters may not understand how they benefit from tax reforms that don’t have a big and fast impact on their paychecks.

So maybe the right answer is to rip up the entire tax code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.

Read Full Post »

The Medicare Money Pit of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Since I primarily work on fiscal policy, I normally look at the budgetary impact of entitlement programs. And the numbers are very grim.

But I’m also an economist, so I periodically comment on how government intervention undermines the efficient functioning of markets in the healthcare field.

Last but not least, I’m also a taxpayer, so I can’t resist occasionally expressing my frustration at how the government is a giant pinata of waste fraud and abuse. And government-run healthcare seems especially vulnerable.

Huge amounts of money bilked from taxpayers for supposed counseling sessions financed by Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare getting scammed to pay for plastic surgery.

Russian diplomats scheming to get their healthcare costs covered by Medicaid.

We now have another example to add to the list.

The Washington Post has an excellent expose on how government incompetence has made Medicare a prime target for fraudsters and other crooks.

…in a Los Angeles courtroom, Bonilla described the workings of a peculiar fraud scheme that — starting in the mid-1990s — became one of the great success stories in American crime. The sucker in this scheme was the U.S. government. …The tool of the crime was the motorized wheelchair. The wheelchair scam was designed to exploit blind spots in Medicare, which often pays insurance claims without checking them first. Criminals disguised themselves as medical-supply companies. They ginned up bogus bills, saying they’d provided expensive wheelchairs to Medicare patients — who, in reality, didn’t need wheelchairs at all. Then the scammers asked Medicare to pay them back, so they could pocket the huge markup that the government paid on each chair. …The government paid. Since 1999, Medicare has spent $8.2 billion to procure power wheelchairs and “scooters” for 2.7 million people. Today, the government cannot even guess at how much of that money was paid out to scammers.

Wow. Billions of dollars of fraud and the government to this day still can’t figure out the level of theft.

And wheelchair fraud is just a small slice of the problem.

…while it lasted, the scam illuminated a critical failure point in the federal bureaucracy: Medicare’s weak defenses against fraud. The government knew how the wheelchair scheme worked in 1998. But it wasn’t until 15 years later that officials finally did enough to significantly curb the practice. …Fraud in Medicare has been a top concern in Washington for decades, in part because the program’s mistakes are so expensive. In fiscal 2013, for instance, Medicare paid out almost $50 billion in “improper payments.”

You won’t be surprised to learn that fraud is so lucrative because the government routinely over-pays for items.

…The original equipment scam had sprung up in the 1970s, at a time when Medicare was young and criminals were still learning how to steal its money. Doctors, for example, could bill Medicare for exams they didn’t do. Hospitals could bill for tests that patients didn’t need. The equipment scam was the poor man’s way in, an entry-level fraud that didn’t require a medical degree or a hospital. …“Let me put it to you this way: An $840 power wheelchair, Medicare pays close to $5,000 for. So there’s a huge profit margin there. Huge,” said one California man who participated in a recent fraud scheme involving wheelchairs.

So this isn’t just a story about government incompetence and taxpayer ripoffs, it’s also a story which shows why third-party payer is a recipe for excessive healthcare spending.

The good news is that the wheelchair scam is slowly fading away.

The bad news is that the overall problem of a poorly designed entitlement system ensures that scammers and other crooks will simply come up with other ways to pillage taxpayers.

Today, even while the wheelchair scam is in decline, that same “pay and chase” system is allowing other variants of the Medicare equipment scam to thrive. They aren’t perfect. But they work.  In Brooklyn, for instance, the next big thing is shoe inserts. Scammers bill Medicare for a $500 custom-made orthotic, according to investigators. They give the patient a $30 Dr. Scholl’s.

Geesh.

When examining entitlements, I’ve  argued that Medicaid reform is the biggest priority.

But perhaps the rampant fraud means Medicare should be addressed first.

Though the right answer is to reform both programs, which is why I’m so pleased that the House of Representatives has approved the Ryan budget for four consecutive years, even if each new proposal allows more spending than the previous one. What matters most if that Ryan’s plan block grants Medicaid and creates a premium support system for Medicare.

Those reforms won’t eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, but the structural reforms will make it harder for crooks to take advantage of the programs.

P.S. If you want more background information on Medicare, here’s a post that explains why the program is so costly even though seniors don’t enjoy first-class benefits.

P.P.S. And here’s my video explaining why Medicare desperately needs reform.

But keep in mind we also need reform of Medicaid and Social Security.

Read Full Post »

Another Victory for the Laffer Curve, this Time over the Lifestyle Puritans

What do cigarettes and capital gains have in common?

Well, they both start with the same letter, so maybe the Cookie Monster could incorporate them into his favorite song, but I’m thinking about something else. Specifically, both cigarettes and capital gains tell us something important about tax policy, the Laffer Curve, and the limits of political bullying.

In both cases, there are folks on the left who disapprove of these two “c” words and want to penalize them with high tax rates.

But it turns out that both cigarettes and capital gains are moving targets, so the politicians are grossly mistaken if they think that punitive taxation will generate a windfall of revenue.

I’ve already discussed why it’s senseless to impose high tax rates on capital gains. Simply stated, people can avoid the tax by not selling assets.

This might not be an ideal way of managing one’s investments, and it certainly isn’t good for the economy if it discourages new investment and prevents people from shifting existing investments into more productive uses, but it’s very effective as a strategy for individuals to protect against excessive taxation.

We see something quite similar with cigarettes. People can simply choose to buy fewer smokes.

Michel Kelly-Gagnon of Canada’s Montreal Economic Institute explains why higher tobacco taxes are not a guaranteed source of revenue for the political class.

Tax increases do not in each and every case lead to increases in government revenues. …When taxes on the consumption of a good are too high, you can get to a point where taxable consumption decreases and government revenues diminish rather than increase. Or at any rate, they don’t increase as much as what would be expected given the tax increase. This phenomenon constrains government’s ability to levy taxes. …There have been numerous examples in Canada of excessive taxes having a negative impact on government revenues. As shown by my colleagues Jean-François Minardi and Francis Pouliot in a study published last January ., there’s been three “Laffer moments” when it comes to tobacco tax revenues in Quebec since 1976. Whenever the level of taxation exceeded $15 per carton, the proceeds of the tobacco taxes eventually diminished. These are no isolated incidents. Laffer shows that the theory is confirmed by the experience of Cyprus, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Portugal, and Sweden.

Here’s a chart from his column showing how tax revenue has dropped in Quebec when the tax burden became too onerous.

Michel then acknowledges that some people will be happy about falling revenue because it presumably means fewer smokers.

But that’s not necessarily true.

While it is true that some people are deterred from smoking by tax increases, this is not the case of all smokers. Some avoid taxes by buying contraband cigarettes. Tax increases have no effect on the health of these smokers.

And because the tax burden is so severe, the underground economy for cigarettes is booming.

The folks at Michigan’s Mackinac Center have some remarkable and thorough estimates.

Since 2008, Mackinac Center for Public Policy analysts have periodically published estimates of cigarette smuggling in 47 of the 48 contiguous states. The numbers are quite shocking. In 2012, more than 27 percent of all Michigan in-state consumption was smuggled. In New York, almost 57 percent of all cigarettes consumed in the state were also illicit. This has profound effects on the revenue generated by state (and sometimes local) government. …We estimate nationwide revenue losses due to cigarette smuggling at $5.5 billion, a statistic consistent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ $5 billion estimate for 2009.

Here are the numbers for each state.

If all this evidence isn’t enough for you, I also encourage a look at the impact of higher tobacco taxes in Ireland, the United States, and Bulgaria and Romania.

Heck, even the city of Washington, DC, serves as a perverse role model on the foolishness of over-taxation.

P.S. Since this column focuses on the Laffer Curve and tobacco taxation, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Art Laffer recently put together a Handbook of Tobacco Taxation – Theory and Practice.

P.P.S. Art implies, at least indirectly, that policy makers should set the tax rate on tobacco at the revenue-maximizing level. That is far better than having the rate above the revenue-maximizing level, to be sure, but it rubs me the wrong way. I will repeat to my final day on earth that the growth-maximizing tax rate is far superior to the revenue-maximizing tax rate.

P.P.P.S. I’m currently in Australia for a series of speeches on fiscal policy. But as you can see from this photo, the PotL and I managed to find time to act like shameless tourists.

P.P.P.P.S. Since I’m imitating Crocodile Dundee in the photo, I should close by noting that Paul Hogan (the actor who played Crocodile Dundee) has been harassed by the Australian tax police.

Read Full Post »

Secular Stagnation Is the Unwelcome and Predictable Consequence of Bad Policy and Big Government

I shared a chart back in February that shows how long it takes to double GDP based on different growth rates.

For instance, if the economy grows only 1 percent per year, it takes 70 years before the economy doubles. Think Italy or some other decrepit European welfare state.

But if the economy grows 4 percent annually, the economy doubles in less than 20 years. I’d point to Hong Kong and Singapore as examples, but they grow even faster.

The key point is that long-run growth is the key to a more prosperous society.

And that’s why the relatively weak growth of the Bush-Obama years is so troubling. Moreover, CNBC reports that some policy makers fret that the economy could be facing a period of prolonged stagnation.

Is there something seriously wrong with the economy? It’s a scary prospect, and a concern that’s gotten louder and louder over the past year. In economic circles, it goes by the alliterative name of “secular stagnation.” And it’s a phrase that Fed watchers are likely to hear more and more in the months ahead. Recent comments by the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer, indicate questions within the central bank about whether the slow growth that has followed the recent recession could reflect, or at least could potentially morph into, longer-term issues within the economy. …The theory of secular stagnation was first developed by Alvin Hansen, who wondered in the midst of the Great Depression whether diminishing investment opportunities in a maturing economy would stunt economic growth and permanently prevent full employment—at least in the absence of robust government intervention… These theories have found a new life in the aftermath of the so-called Great Recession, as the U.S. is experiencing (albeit to a much less dramatic degree) slow growth over a relatively long time period.

I agree and disagree.

I agree that something is wrong with the economy.

But I disagree with the Keynesian interpretation that the economy’s weakness is because of some mysterious malady that requires government intervention.

Indeed, the problems exist because politicians are doing too much. If we want faster growth and more jobs, we need government to get out of the way.

This Michael Ramirez cartoon is one way of thinking about the issue.

But if you want more substance, Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore have some very sound analysis, which has been reprinted at Townhall.com.

They start by looking at the present-day Keynesian view.

…today many leading economists are throwing up their arms in frustration and assuring us that 2 percent growth is really the best we can do. Barack Obama’s former chief economist Larry Summers began this chant of “secular stagnation.” It’s a pessimistic message, and it’s now being echoed by Federal Reserve vice chair, Stanley Fischer. He agrees with Summers that slow growth in “labor supply, capital investment, and productivity” is the new normal that’s “holding down growth.” …Americans seem to be buying into this dreary assessment. A new Wall Street Journal poll finds that three out of four Americans think the next generation will be worse off than this generation. So long, American Dream.

But the problem isn’t the economy. Or it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for all the meddling.

Larry and Steve explain that the crowd in Washington deserves blame for the economy’s sub-par performance.

…secular stagnation is all wrong. It’s a cover up for mistaken economic policies that began in the Bush years and intensified during the Obama administration. It would be hard to conceive of a worse set of policy prescriptions than the ones Larry Summers and his Keynesian collaborators have conjured up. We’ve had bailouts, massive spending-stimulus plans, tax increases on “the rich,” Obamacare, rudderless monetary policy that has collapsed the dollar, the Dodd-Frank bill, anti-carbon policies, a vast expansion of the welfare state, and on and on. …The blame falls on the White House and the Fed, and the discredited Keynesian model that government spending, debt, and cheap money are the way to restore growth. …the architects of this colossal policy failure are the same people who promised they would rebuild the U.S. economy “for the long term,” as Barack Obama put it in 2009. But they’re now blaming the stagnant economy on structural problems beyond their control.

Amen.

Just look at the data from the Minneapolis Fed to see how weak the economy is today compared to previous business cycles.

Fortunately, it’s not that difficult to restore growth.

We learned in the 1960s and 1980s how fast the economy can get back on its feet when policy mistakes are reversed. …The secular-stagnation argument is just an excuse for liberal policy failures. Keynesianism should now be recognized as snake oil.

By the way, I’d add the 1990s to that list.

There were some good reasons to dislike President Clinton, but America enjoyed more economic freedom as a result of the policies implemented during his presidency.

As a fiscal policy wonk, I’m especially happy about the spending restraint of the Clinton years.

P.S. Here are some good cartoons about Obamanomics.

Read Full Post »

Some Praise for a Minor Part of Obamacare

I like to think that very few people despise Obamacare more than me.

I don’t like Obamacare because it’s a fiscal boondoggle.

I don’t like Obamacare because it’s bad healthcare policy.

I don’t like Obamacare because it generated an embarrassingly bad decision by the Supreme Court.

I don’t like Obamacare because it is driving people out of the labor force and into government dependency.

I don’t like Obamacare because it has increased corruption in Washington.

And I don’t like Obamacare because it further enriches and empowers Washington’s political class.

But I also like being honest and that means I’m willing to acknowledge that there’s one small part of Obamacare that will have a positive impact.

More specifically, the so-called Cadillac tax on expensive employer-provided health plans will slightly reduce the distortion in the tax code that encourages over-insurance and exacerbates the healthcare system’s pervasive third-party payer problem.

Indeed, we’re seeing some signs of this already, even though the tax preference isn’t capped until 2018. Here are some excerpts from a story published by Fox News, starting with a description of the law.

…companies desperate to avoid a 40 percent ObamaCare “Cadillac tax” are finding ways to shift the costs to workers. The so-called “Cadillac tax,” now four years away, will affect health plans that spend more than $10,200 per worker. “The excise tax, when it hits in 2018, will affect both employers and employees,”said Brian Marcotte, president of the National Business Group on Health.

Allow me to make an important correction before sharing other parts of the story.

Companies aren’t shifting costs to workers. The money currently spent on health insurance policies is part of total employee compensation.

Think of it this way. If a company hires you for a salary of $50,000 and also includes a $10,000 health insurance policy, what’s your total compensation?

If you give an answer other than $60,000, you’re either very bad at math or you have the logic skills of a politician.

So the story should have stated that the Cadillac tax is merely making workers more aware of costs that already exist.

Thanks for letting me vent. Now back to our main point, which is that the Cadillac tax discourages overinsurance, and this is already leading to some positive changes in the marketplace.

Employees will get incentives to reduce costs through such arrangements as wellness programs, including losing weight or stopping smoking. Meanwhile, employers are shifting workers into plans with higher deductibles, just as ObamaCare does in the health care exchanges, and using health savings accounts to help defray the costs.

I’m particularly happy that employers and employees are shifting to plans with higher deductibles. As I’ve explained before, health insurance should cover large, unanticipated costs, such as the onset of cancer or getting injured in a car wreck.

But it shouldn’t cover annual checkups, elective surgery, and other routine and/or predictable expenses.

And we have one other bit of good news. The tax isn’t going to raise nearly as much money as the politicians wanted!

The “Cadillac tax” was originally intended to take effect sooner, but unions and other groups convinced officials to delay it until 2018, reducing the anticipated income from $137 billion to $80 billion over ten years. But many analysts predict it will be far less than that. Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution said, “before then, it’s expected that most of the businesses that offer that form of insurance will back off and make the insurance less generous, so the tax won’t bite.” …if employers are able to avoid it and less than expected is collected, ObamaCare could fall tens of billions short in paying for itself as promised.

I should hasten to add, by the way, that I’m glad that Obamacare isn’t paying for itself since that simply means lots of taxes to accompany all the additional spending.

I’d be even happier, of course, if we could figure out how to get rid of all the spending as well.

Just in case folks are thinking I’ve gone soft, let’s close today’s post with some humor directed at the rest of Obamacare.

Since the IRS is a big part of Obamacare, here’s a particularly good bumper sticker that shares a line with the above poster.

Here’s a poster mocking the delightful fiscal impact of the law.

Though whoever put this together should have been careful of using The Joker.

I like this next poster since it highlights how politicians have exempted themselves from the law.

Last but not least, here’s Dr. Obama making a cameo appearance.

Ah, the IRS shows up again. Do you sense a theme?

And don’t forget the IRS bureaucrats want to be exempt from the law as well.

P.S. If you’re a glass-one-tenth-full person, here’s some other good news about Obamacare.

Read Full Post »

Encouraging Polling Data…Plus Disturbing Policy Developments from Russia and the United Kingdom

The polling data I shared last month about confused young people was a bit of a downer, so let’s look at three different polls that are a bit more encouraging.

First, I’m glad to see that many Americans feel that government and politicians are their leading cause of daily stress.

Here’s some of what the Washington Post reported on this poll.

…much of that emotional response is completely justified. As if it weren’t enough that our politicians are actively working to harm the global economy and otherwise failing to do their jobs or even show up for work in general, they’re also stressing everyone out with the astonishing breadth and depth of their incompetence. And since high stress is linked to shorter life expectancy, they are also literally killing us with their incompetence. In other words, thanks, Obama (and everyone in Congress too).

My job is to connect the dots so that people understand that the only way to reduce stress is to make government smaller.

And, for what it’s worth, that’s the best way to make government at least semi-competent.

Our second batch of polling numbers come from Rasmussen. I’ve shared research and data on the negative impact of redistribution spending (as illustrated by this powerful chart), but I figured most Americans didn’t understand that such programs trap people in dependency.

I’m glad to read that I’m wrong. In an article entitled, “49% Believe Government Programs Increase Poverty in America,” Rasmussen reports the following.

Most Americans still believe current government anti-poverty programs have no impact on poverty in this country or actually increase it. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that a plurality (44%) of American Adults still think the government spends too much on poverty programs.

The Rasmussen folks also have this encouraging bit of public opinion research.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 67% of American Adults think there are too many in this country who are dependent on the government for financial aid, up slightly from 64% in September of last year.

Our third set of polling numbers come from the periodic Reason-Rupe poll.

I’ll share several pieces of data, but here are the numbers I find most encouraging. Apparently most people realize that pro-growth policy is the right approach, not class warfare and redistribution.

In terms of economic policies, 74 percent of Americans would like Congress to focus on policies to promote economic growth, while 20 percent favor policies to reduce income inequality.

I guess I’m also happy about these results, though I can’t help but think that there are some very confused folks in the Tea Party.

Fifty-five percent of Americans tell Reason-Rupe they have a favorable opinion of capitalism. Meanwhile, 36 percent of those surveyed, including 33 percent of independents and 26 percent of self-described Tea Party supporters, have a favorable opinion of socialism.

I don’t even think Obama’s a socialist, so these ostensibly anti-Obama folks apparently favor even more government than our statist President. Go figure.

Last but not least, I should like this result, but I’m actually disturbed since the margin is much smaller than it should be.

When asked about the size of government, 54 percent of Americans favor a smaller government providing fewer services. Forty-two percent favor a larger government providing more services.

P.S. Remember when I warned that the one downside to personal retirement accounts is that future politicians might steal the money?

Well, it’s happened again according to Reuters, this time in Russia.

Russia’s government has approved a plan to use contributions to employees’ privately-managed pension funds to plug budget holes for a second year running. The move was confirmed by Labour Minister Maxim Topilin on Tuesday in comments published on the ministry’s website. It has been heavily criticised by some officials and analysts, who say it will hurt the pensions industry and financial markets.

P.P.S. I was beginning to feel a bit more positive about the Tory-led government in the United Kingdom, particularly after reading about some well-designed welfare reform, significant corporate tax cuts, and postal service privatization.

Then I read something awful. And what could be worse than imposing a death tax on people who are still alive.

Savers could be forced to pay inheritance tax while they are still alive, under a new drive against tax avoidance planned by the Government. …Under plans put out for consultation, HM Revenue & Customs would have powers to subject people minimising inheritance tax to “accelerated payment” laws, meaning they would be forced to pay up front if officials suspect them of using new schemes to avoid tax. Experts have warned that under the rules, taxpayers will be treated as “guilty until proven innocent”. …there will be concerns that innocent people could be investigated and made to pay large sums before they are able to defend themselves. …Economists, tax experts and Tory MPs have called for reform of the tax, warning that it predominantly hits middle-class families.

Shame on David Cameron for allowing this to happen. But I’m not surprised given the government’s track record.

And what else would you expect from a government that brainwashes children to rat out their parents and also puts despicable Orwellian ads on subways and trains?

Read Full Post »

World Bank Research Shows Tax Complexity Facilitates Corruption

I don’t like international bureaucracies because they generally push for policies that expand the burden of government and undermine economic growth.

But I recognize that there are some good people who work at these institutions and I’m always willing to acknowledge when they publish good research.

The IMF said that Greece had reached the tipping point where taxes were too high.

The World Bank put together a report showing how anti-money laundering regulations hurt the poor.

The United Nations acknowledged the Laffer-Curve insight that taxes can be too high.

The OECD admitted that income taxes undermine growth and that tax competition restrains the greed of the political class.

The European Central Bank found excessive government spending undermines economic performance.

We can now add some new research to that list. The World Bank has just published a new study highlighting the link between tax complexity and tax corruption.

You can peruse the entire report if you’re so inclined, but here are the key details from the abstract.

This paper seeks to find empirical evidence of a link between tax simplification and corruption in tax administration. …The study includes 104 countries from different income groups and regions of the world. The time period is 2002–12. The empirical findings support the existence of a significant link between the measure of tax corruption and tax simplicity, so a less complex tax system is shown to be associated with lower corruption in tax administration. It is predicted that the combined effect of a 10 percent reduction in both the number of payments and the time to comply with tax requirements can lower tax corruption by 9.64 percent….The positive link between tax simplicity and lower tax corruption has useful policy implications.

There are a few caveats. While people have a greater incentive to rig the system when tax rates are high, the report only addresses this issue tangentially. This is a very unfortunate oversight.

Also, the data show that corruption is higher in developing nations, which is not terribly surprising. Though I think this might be unfair because corruption is narrowly defined so that it’s simply a measure of lawbreaking.

I suspect there are similar amounts of corruption in developed nations, but it takes the form of influence peddling and legislative favors. That’s definitely the mother’s milk of Washington’s sleazy insiders.

And if you look at this chart, this chart, or this chart, there’s no doubt that the internal revenue code is riddled with loopholes.

This video elaborates on the connection between bloated government and legal corruption.

And this video shows how our corrupt tax code could be fixed.

P.S. Just so you don’t think I’m getting soft-hearted about the World Bank, just remember that this is the bureaucracy that put together a tax “report card” that gave nations higher grades for having more punitive fiscal policy.

P.P.S. In the interests of fairness, I am a fan of the World Bank’s Doing Business Index.

P.P.P.S. I’ve written several times about overpaid bureaucrats and fat-cat lobbyists.

Well, here’s a look at per capita personal income in Washington, DC, compared to the rest of America.

You’ll notice that Washington got substantially richer during both Bush Administrations.

But it’s not just the District of Columbia. If you click on this map, you’ll see that a majority of America’s richest communities are the suburbs of Washington.

A lot of fat and happy people living directly or indirectly off your tax dollars.

Read Full Post »

America’s Libertarian Moment?

I work at the libertarian Cato Institute (aka, America’s most effective think tank), and I think libertarianism is the philosophy that best reflects human decency.

But I sometimes wonder why libertarians aren’t more persuasive and why there aren’t any libertarian societies.

However, maybe there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been asked by several readers to comment on the debate about whether America is enjoying a libertarian phase, particularly among the so-called millenials. This discussion was triggered by a feature article in the New York Times magazine.

You won’t be surprised to learn that I hope the answer is yes. So it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyhow) that my fingers are crossed that Nick Gillespie of Reason is correct is his reaction to the NYT article.

Though I worry that the social capital of the American people (of all ages) has been sufficiently eroded that they won’t permit the entitlement reforms and program restructurings that are necessary to control – and hopefully reduce – the burden of government spending. So perhaps David Frum’s take in The Atlantic is more accurate, even if I hope he’s wrong.

For what it’s worth, I’m a bit more optimistic after reading Ben Domenech’s analysis for The Federalist.

I’m a fiscal policy wonk rather than a big-picture libertarian, so I’m not particularly qualified to assess who is right. That being said, you can sense a bit of my hopefulness in the post-post-postscript below.

P.S. Since we’re on the topic of libertarianism, let’s talk about Harry Reid’s favorite people, Charles Koch and David Koch.

If you get your news from the establishment media, you doubtlessly think these supposedly evil billionaire brothers are dictating political outcomes with their ostensibly lavish spending on campaigns.

Yet if you look at a list of the top 100 individual donors to political races, David Koch is #90 and Charles Koch isn’t even on the list.

Some of you may be thinking that they funnel their largesse through other vehicles, but even when you look at organizational giving, Koch Industries is only #36 on the list.

Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner slices and dices the data.

…only two of the nation’s top 20 donors to federal campaigns favor the GOP, and a stunning 11 are labor unions including the AFL-CIO, and both teachers unions, according to a new report. The highly respected Center for Responsive Politics put the pro-Democratic fundraising group ActBlue at the top of the organization donor list, coughing up over $30 million, with 99 percent going to Democrats. Way down at No. 36 is Koch Industries, the conservatively run company Democrats claim control the GOP. …Among individuals, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ranked second in donations, with $8,710,678 of his $9,495,798 going to Democrats and Democratic causes. …Among individual donors, the top three are also Democrats. The rest of the list is evenly split in who they give money to.

P.P.S. Since we’re talking about the Kochs, I find it laughable that conspiracy mongers on the left somehow thought I was worth including in this flowchart.

The other people are all donors, directors, or executives. I’m just a policy wonk. Heck, they didn’t even make the one connection that does exist, which is the fact that I used to be married to Nancy.

P.P.P.S. On the other hand, I feel honored but unworthy to have been subject of a profile by the folks at United Liberty.

According to the title, I’m the “guardian angel” of American taxpayers. Needless to say, I wish I had the power to protect folks from rapacious government. Here’s what the article actually says about my angelic qualities.

World renowned tax expert and Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchell thinks of politicians as characters in old cartoons that, when faced with a decision, suddenly find they’ve an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both handing out advice as to the right move. He sees himself, flashing a grin that signals you shouldn’t take him too seriously, as the angel. “My job is to convince [politicians] to do what’s right for the country, not what’s right for their own political aspirations,” he says.

The article also explains what got me involved in the fight for liberty.

Mitchell has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from UGA, as well as a PhD in economics from George Mason University. But he got his start as a limited government conservative as a high school student who, like many others, found himself struck by the wisdom of Ronald Reagan. “I was drawn to his message that government was the problem, not the solution,” he says. “One thing that was definitely part of Regan’s philosophy that I got right away was that you shouldn’t punish success and you shouldn’t reward bad behavior.” Reagan, he says, accomplished more on spending than people give him credit for, and succeeded largely due to his policy of tax rate reductions, the taming of inflation, the slight reduction in all federal spending, and the massive shift away from domestic spending toward defense spending.

But regular readers already know I have a man-crush on The Gipper.

The final excerpt explains why I’m slightly optimistic, though I certainly don’t expect to put myself out of a job.

…he is a patriot who cares about the future of America.“What matters most is that somehow, in the next couple of years, Congress needs to approve, enact, and implement [Paul] Ryan’s entitlement reforms — block-granting medicaid and turning medicare into a premium support system,” he says. “It’s the only way to save the country.”Otherwise, we become “France at best, Greece at worst.”  …he notes that “if you want to be optimistic, progress comes rather quickly” once proper reforms are in place, and the transition is not terribly painful. But what happens if he gets his wish? Isn’t he working to put himself out of a job?“I’m sure there will be enough bad government policy to keep me occupied for the rest of my life,” he laughs. “As much as I would like to put myself out of a job, I have so far not demonstrated that level of competence.”

Simply stated, even if we get genuine entitlement reform and put the brakes on wasteful discretionary spending, it will still be a full-time job to keep the politicians from backsliding.

Anyhow, read the entire profile if you have a few minutes to kill.

P.P.P.P.S. Building on the superb image of bread, capitalism, and socialism, let’s close with something for our collection of pro-libertarian humor…

…as well as something for our collection of anti-libertarian humor.

Reminds me of the libertarian lifeguard cartoon, at least in the sense that we supposedly are indifferent to children.

Though obviously an absurd caricature. After all, libertarians want school choice to help poor kids while the statists are the ones standing in the schoolhouse door.

Read Full Post »

Obama, Corporate Inversions, and Grotesque Hypocrisy

Last month, I put together a list of six jaw-dropping examples of left-wing hypocrisy, one of which featured Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.

He made the list for having the chutzpah to criticize corporate inversions on the basis of supposed economic patriotism, even though he invested lots of money via the Cayman Islands when he was a crony capitalist at Citigroup.

But it turns out that Lew’s hypocrisy is just the tip of the iceberg.

It seems the entire Obama Administration was in favor of inversions just a couple of years ago. Check out these excerpts from a Bloomberg story.

President Barack Obama says U.S. corporations that adopt foreign addresses to avoid taxes are unpatriotic. His own administration helped one $20 billion American company do just that. As part of the bailout of the auto industry in 2009, Obama’s Treasury Department authorized spending $1.7 billion of government funds to get a bankrupt Michigan parts-maker back on its feet — as a British company. While executives continue to run Delphi Automotive Plc (DLPH) from a Detroit suburb, the paper headquarters in England potentially reduces the company’s U.S. tax bill by as much as $110 million a year. The Obama administration’s role in aiding Delphi’s escape from the U.S. tax system may complicate the president’s new campaign against corporate expatriation.

But that’s only part of the story.

…his administration continues to award more than $1 billion annually in government business to more than a dozen corporate expats.

And since we’re on the subject of hypocrisy, there’s another Bloomberg report worth citing.

President Barack Obama has been bashing companies that pursue offshore mergers to reduce taxes. He hasn’t talked about the people behind the deals — some of whom are his biggest donors. Executives, advisers and directors involved in some of the tax-cutting transactions include Blair Effron, an investment banker who hosted Obama for a May fundraiser at his two-level, 9,000-square-foot apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Others are Jim Rogers, co-chairman of the host committee for the 2012 Democratic National Convention; Roger Altman, a former senior Treasury Department official who raised at least $200,000 for Obama’s re-election campaign; and Shantanu Narayen, who sits on the president’s management advisory board. The administration’s connections to more than 20 donors associated with the transactions are causing tensions for the president.

Gee, I’m just heartbroken when politicians have tensions.

But I’m a policy wonk rather than a political pundit, so let’s now remind ourselves why inversions are taking place so that the real solution becomes apparent.

The Wall Street Journal opines, explaining that companies are being driven to invert by the combination of worldwide taxation and a punitive tax rate.

…the U.S. has the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world, and that’s an incentive for all companies, wherever they are based, to invest outside the U.S. But the current appetite for inversions—in which a U.S. firm buys a foreign company and adopts its legal address while keeping operational headquarters in the U.S.—results from the combination of this punitive rate with a separate problem created by Washington. The U.S. is one of only six OECD countries that imposes on its businesses the world-wide taxation of corporate profits. Every company pays taxes to the country in which profits are earned. But U.S. companies have the extra burden of also paying the IRS whenever those profits come back from the foreign country into the U.S. The tax bill is the difference between whatever the companies paid overseas and the 35% U.S. rate. The perverse result is that a foreign company can choose to invest in the U.S. without penalty, but U.S.-based Medtronic would pay hundreds of millions and perhaps billions in additional taxes if it wanted to bring overseas profits back to its home country. …Keep in mind that the money invested in corporations was once earned by someone who paid taxes on it. And it will be taxed again as dividends or capital gains.

Amen. And kudos to the WSJ for pointing out there the internal revenue code imposes multiple layers of taxation on income that is saved and invested.

That’s very bad news for workers since it means less capital formation.

Let’s close with this great cartoon from Michael Ramirez…

…and also a couple of videos on international taxation.

First we have this video on “deferral,” which is very relevant since it explains why worldwide taxation is so destructive.

And we also have this video about Obama’s anti-tax haven demagoguery.

I particularly like the reference to Ugland House since that’s where Obama’s Treasury Secretary parked money.

But it’s all okay, at least if you’re part of the political class. Just repeat over and over again that rules are for the peasants in the private sector, not the elite in Washington and their crony donors.

Read Full Post »

Disgusting News and Great News about the Exercise of Second Amendment Freedoms

As a libertarian, it’s easy for me to get agitated about the theoretical burden of high taxes, wasteful spending, and costly regulation.

But even regular people should get upset when they get exposed to specific examples of individuals who are victimized by abusive government.

Regarding the particular topic of Second Amendment freedoms and government misbehavior, I know I get very angry when I read about what happened to folks like Adam Meckler and Benjamin Srigley.

And now we can add Shaneen Allen to the list. Here’s some of what Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee wrote for USA Today.

When Ray Rice beat his wife unconscious in an elevator, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Michael Donio and New Jersey District Attorney Jim McClain agreed to put him in a diversion program for 1st-time offenders to keep him out of jail. But when Pennsylvania single mom Shaneen Allen was pulled over for a traffic violation and volunteered to a New Jersey police officer that she was carrying a legally-owned handgun with a Pennsylvania permit, the response of Donis and McClain was to deny her the same opportunity as Rice. …she faces a felony conviction and a mandatory 42 months in prison. Both Donio and McClain have been unwilling to dismiss the charges, or send Allen to a pretrial diversion program. They seem to want to make an example of her.

How disgusting. A big-time athlete gets special treatment even though he brutalized another person.

But Ms. Allen, who didn’t hurt anybody and only wanted the ability to protect herself, is being abused by the heavy hand of government.

Professor Reynolds argues that this is a problem that merits federal intervention.

The problem is, she’s being punished for something the Constitution says — and the Supreme Court has agreed — is a constitutional right. …Shaneen Allen wasn’t committing gun violence, and civilians with gun permits are a very law-abiding bunch, who have passed a background check and undergone training; no sensible state would want to discourage them from visiting. …Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to protect civil rights via legislation, and this seems like a good subject for action. I would suggest a law providing that when people who may legally own guns under federal law are charged with possessing or carrying them in violation of state law, the maximum penalty should be a fine of no more than $500. This would allow states a reasonable degree of regulation, without subjecting individuals to life-ruining consequences just because some politico wants to make a point.

Speaking of politicos, I hope Governor Chris Christie intervenes and pardons Ms. Allen. Pre-emptively if that’s even legally possible.

A few years ago, he did commute the sentence of a guy who was similarly victimized by New Jersey’s awful laws, so he’s at least semi-reasonable on these issues.

Now let’s shift gears and review a more uplifting story.

Back in 2011, I wrote about the unfortunate plight of unarmed Brits who had very little ability to defend themselves when their neighborhoods were assaulted by rioters and compared that situation to what happened during the Los Angeles riots, when Korean business owners used guns to successfully protect their lives and property.

And I augmented that analysis in 2012 when I wrote about disarmed New Yorkers who were vulnerable to thugs during the chaos that followed Hurricane Sandy.

However, there are places where people can exercise their constitutional rights to self defense, so let’s look at a feel-good story from the Midwest.

Here are some excerpts from a report out of St. Louis.

After nightfall, what began as a community’s peaceful demonstration against the Ferguson Police Department’s shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown turned increasingly violent. Crowds plundered a QuikTrip and burned it to the ground, and local news began reporting brazen raids on other stores in the area. After hearing of the roving bands of looters, Mike Gutierrez knew he had to protect his tattoo shop. He brought a posse with him, including Adam Weinstein, owner of County Guns… Gutierrez, Weinstein and their group arrived to find thieves tearing through a Dollar General in the same strip mall that houses their business. Weinstein says the looters attempted moving toward the shop, but were scared off by the guns.

Hooray that these guys had the freedom to defend themselves.

And I love the accompanying photo. At the risk of stereotyping, I assume that guys who run tattoo parlors are bad asses. Give them some guns and it becomes very obvious why the looters stayed away.

Though even mild-mannered suburban dads can deter looters. At least when they’re armed.

Meanwhile, what happens to store owners that rely on the government to protect them when bad things happen?

Well, there’s not a happy ending.

At the other end of the same strip mall that houses Gutierrez and Weinstein’s business, 53-year-old Silas Chung arrived at his women’s clothing store, Up N Up Fashion, to find a pane of glass shattered and a mannequin lying on its back in the parking lot. Inside the store, racks of newly stocked clothing had been stripped bare. Chung has endured a couple burglaries in the past nine years of running the store, but nothing comparable.

I hope Mr. Chung has insurance, though I would recommend that he also buy some guns and learn to shoot.

Sort of like this honest liberal.

P.S. As I’m typing this, I’m looking at the cufflinks that I received as a birthday present from the PotL. Very appropriate, wouldn’t you agree?

Perhaps not as strong of a statement as my license plate or my daughter’s t-shirt, but very nice nonetheless.

P.P.S. Here are some good videos on gun control (both serious and satirical) and here’s some good humor on the topic.

Read Full Post »

New Members of the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame…or a Great Moment in Government Waste

Which nation has the most costly bureaucracy?

Well, if the answer is based solely on how much it costs to employ bureaucrats, you can see from this chart that Denmark comes in first place.

As an American taxpayer, I’m glad to learn that there are other nations that squander more money on civil servants.

But I get the feeling that the crowd in Washington is miffed that the United States didn’t wind up at the top of the list.

I’m being satirical, of course, but that’s what came to mind because is seems that our political masters are doing everything possible to waste money on needless bureaucracy.

For instance, here are some disturbing details for a report published by CNBC.

The federal government has a serious problem keeping tabs on its employees, from an FCC worker watching porn while at work, to DHS employees collecting overtime pay to sit on Netflix or talk on the phone. And now, a new report from the Patent and Trademark Office found that at least 19 paralegals have been getting paid $60,000 to $80,000 a year to sit on Facebook, online shop and watch TV — costing taxpayers about $5.1 million in the last four years. Even more egregious — the auditors said managers looked the other way and billed the hours under “other time” while also giving each of the workers thousands of dollars worth of performance bonuses during that same time period. The managers “were completely aware of the volume of ‘other time’ hours during the relevant time frame and took little action to prevent such waste,” the IG said. The auditors said one manager even dubbed the billing code the “I don’t have work but I’m going to get paid code.” …The report said “nonproductive time” racked up to between 50 and 70 hours in an 80-hour pay period.

But let’s be fair to the bureaucrats.

The story says they were goofing off because nobody gave them any work.

Whistleblowers told auditors that the paralegals just didn’t have enough work to do, so they spent their time doing other things — some even volunteered for charity organizations while clocked in at the Patent and Trademark Office. …whistleblowers said the paralegals rely on judges to assign them work and there weren’t enough judges on staff to assign new cases.

Or maybe the judges are lazy and inefficient, which is not exactly an unknown trait inside government.

In any event, the most outrageous part of the story is that the bureaucrats at the Patent and Trademark Office were given thousands of dollars in performance bonuses. For what?!? Doing a superlative job of watching TV?!?

Though I must admit this isn’t as bad as the bureaucrats at the Veterans Administration, who gave themselves bonuses while letting veterans languish and die on secret waiting lists.

And to add insult to injury, the bureaucrats at the Patent and Trademark Office (and their lazy and inefficient bosses) work at a luxurious new taxpayer-financed “campus” in suburban Virginia.

As the old saying goes, nice work if you can get it.

Though “work” is obviously a gross overstatement.

The bottom line is that we have a bureaucracy that is far too big and costs far too much.

P.S. Not only does Denmark have the most expensive bureaucrats, it’s also home to “Lazy Robert,” who is a proud member of the Moocher Hall of Fame (and doubtlessly also a passenger on the Party Boat).

P.P.S. I’ve shared more anti-libertarian humor than pro-libertarian humor, so it’s time to impose some balance. Here’s something I just saw on Twitter.

Needless to say, Obama hasn’t exactly been a civil libertarian on surveillance issues.

P.P.P.S. And speaking of humor, the PotL just send me this video from her region of the world.

There’s no political angle, of course, but it fits in with some of the other terrorism-related humor I’ve shared.

Read Full Post »

Social Security’s Looming Fiscal Nightmare

With all the controversy over the failed and costly Obamacare program, it’s understandable that other entitlements aren’t getting much attention.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t serious problems with Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Indeed, the annual Social Security Trustees Report was released a few days ago and the updated numbers for the government-run retirement program are rather sobering.

Thanks in part to sloppy journalism, many people only vaguely realize that Social Security is actuarially unsound.

In reality, the level of projected red ink is shocking. If you look at the report’s annual projections and then adjust them for inflation (so we get an idea of the size of the problem based on the value of today’s dollars), we can put together a very depressing chart.

How depressing is this chart? Well, cumulative deficits over the next 75 years will total an astounding $40 trillion. And keep in mind these are inflation-adjusted numbers. In nominal dollars, total red ink will be far more than $150 trillion.

That’s a lot of money even by Washington standards.

Just as worrisome, the trend is in the wrong direction. Last year, the cumulative inflation-adjusted shortfall was $36 trillion. The year before, the total amount of red ink was $30 trillion. And so on.

But regular readers know I’m not fixated on deficits and debt. I’m much more worried about the underlying problem of too much spending. So let’s look at the annual data showing how much payroll tax will be generated by Social Security and how much money will be paid out to beneficiaries.

As you can see, the problem is not inadequate tax revenue. Indeed, revenues will climb to record levels. The problem is that spending is projected to increase at an even faster rate.

Once again, don’t forget that these are inflation-adjusted numbers. In nominal dollars, the numbers are far bigger!

Why is the program becoming an ever-larger fiscal burden? The answer boils down to demographics. Simply stated, we will have more and more old people and fewer and fewer younger workers.

So if we do nothing, we’ll be Greece in 20 or 30 years.

That’s not a happy thought, so let’s close on a humorous note. Here’s a joke about how Social Security works, and you can enjoy some Social Security-themed cartoons here, here, and here.

P.S. I’m confident that few people will be surprised to learn that Obama’s supposed solution to this mess involves a huge tax increase.

P.P.S. The real solution is personal retirement accounts. I think Australia is the best role model, but Chile also is a big success.

P.P.S. The good news is that the American people are quite sympathetic to personal retirement accounts.

P.P.P.S. Statists try to scare people by claiming private investments are too risky, but one of my Cato colleagues showed that workers would be better off even if they retired after a stock market crash.

P.P.P.P.S. By the way, Social Security is a really bad deal for blacks and other minorities with lower-than-average life expectancies.

P.P.P.P.P.S. In the interests of fairness, I’ll admit the biggest weakness in the argument for personal accounts is that we might not be able to stop politicians from confiscating the money at some point in the future.

Read Full Post »

What Happens When Libertarian Fantasies Become Reality?

No, this post is not about that kind of fantasy.

Instead, we’re dealing strictly with public policy and specifically addressing whether the libertarian agenda is unrealistic.

This is because when I talk to people about libertarianism, they often will say something mildly supportive such as: “I like the idea of getting government out of my wallet and out of my bedroom.”

But then the other shoe drops and they say something skeptical such as: “But you folks are too idealistic in thinking the private sector can do everything.”

If you ask them to elaborate why libertarian ideas are fantasies, you’ll usually hear comments such as:

“Libertarians are crazy to think that we can replace Social Security with personal retirement accounts.” Apparently they’re unaware that dozens of nations including Australia and Chile have very successful private systems.

“Libertarians are silly to think that money could be handled by the private sector.” Apparently they’re unaware that paper money was a creation of the private marketplace and that competitive currencies worked very well in many nations until they were banned by governments.

“Libertarians are naive to think the mail could be delivered in the absence of a government monopoly.” Apparently they’re unaware that many nations such as the United Kingdom and Germany have shifted to competitive private mail delivery.

 “Libertarians are foolish to think that the private sector could build and maintain roads.” Apparently they’re unaware of what I’m going to write about today.

It turns out that the private sector can build roads. And a great example happened earlier this year on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Here are some passages from a story out of the United Kingdom.

A grandfather sick of roadworks near his home defied his council and built his own toll road allowing people to circumvent the disrupted section. Opened on Friday, it’s the first private toll road built since cars became a familiar sight on British roads 100 years ago.  …Mike Watts, 62, hired a crew of workmen and ploughed £150,000 of his own cash into building a 365m long bypass road in a field next to the closed A431. He reckons it will cost another £150,000 in upkeep costs and to pay for two 24 hour a day toll booth operators. …Father of four Mike asked his friend John Dinham if he would mind renting him the field until Christmas and hired three workmen to help build the road in just 10 days. He worked with the Highways Agency, has public liability insurance… But a spokesman for the council said it was not happy about the bold build.

Wow, talk about the private sector coming to the rescue. Two things jump out from that story. First, it took only 10 days and £150,000 to build the road. If the government did it, it would take 20 times as long and cost 30 times as much.

The other noteworthy part of the story is that the local government isn’t happy. Well, of course not. Mr. Watts showed them up.

Some of you may be thinking this is a once-in-a-lifetime story and that we shouldn’t draw any lessons.

But that’s why an article by Nick Zaiac in London’s City A.M. is a must read. He cites the new toll road, but puts it in historical context.

Adams’ work falls into a long tradition of private provision of public services in order to serve some private goal. …Actions like these are not without precedent. In the American island state of Hawaii, residents and business owners gathered together in 2009 to fix a road through a state park that was vital to the area. They completed it entirely for free, with locals donating machinery, materials, and labor. In fact, the project was completed in a shockingly brief eight days. …Private roads have a long and storied history in both Britain and the US. Between 1800 and 1830, private turnpikes made up an astounding 27 per cent of all business incorporations in the US. Britain, between 1750 and 1772, had previously experienced a period of “turnpike mania”, as noted by economic historians Daniel Klein and John Majewski. Put simply, private infrastructure is by no means a new thing. It is simply the slow return to the way many roads were originally built.

Nick then explains that the private sector is making a comeback, and not just for little projects in the United Kingdom and Hawaii.

Australia stands out as one of the leaders. There are currently eight P3 projects on the market, with others in the pipeline, ranging from new rail lines and roads to hospitals. Each of these projects brings private financing into traditionally public projects, with benefits to companies, taxpayers, and, local citizens. Even better, as David Haarmeyer notes in Regulation, infrastructure projects such as those funded public private partnerships serve as good, long-term investments for investors seeking safe returns. …The traditional role of the government as infrastructure monopolist is slowly falling apart. Whether from grassroots efforts or large, complicated P3 projects such as the M6 Toll, the market is proving that it can provide infrastructure that people need, in one way or another.

John Stossel also has written on the topic and discussed modern-day examples of private sector involvement in the United States.

Heck, there are even private lanes on the Virginia side of the “beltway” that circles Washington!

So the moral of the story is that the private sector can do a lot more than people think.

In other words, libertarians may fantasize when they think of very small government. But the fantasy is not because libertarian policy is impractical. The fantasy is thinking (and hoping…and praying…and wishing) that politicians will actually do the right thing.

P.S. You want to know the best part of private roads? If they’re truly private, that means local governments wouldn’t be able to use red-light cameras and ticket traps as scams to generate revenue!

P.P.S. As I explained on Wednesday (only partially tongue in cheek), I’m willing to let the government be in charge of roads if the statists will agree to give people more personal and economic freedom in other areas. I’m not holding my breath waiting for a positive reply.

P.P.P.S. Though if government continued to have authority to build and maintain roads, that doesn’t mean Washington should play a role. The Department of Transportation should be abolished as quickly as possible.

Read Full Post »

A Fair Critique of the Fair Tax

I’m a long-time proponent of the flat tax for three simple reasons.

1. It replaces the discriminatory “progressive” tax with a single tax rate at the lowest possible level, thus reducing the tax penalty on productive behavior.

2. It gets rid of all forms of double taxation, such as the death tax and capital gains tax, meaning economic activity is never taxed more than one time.

3. Other than a family-based allowance, it gets rid of all loopholes, deductions, credits, exemptions, exclusions, and preferences, meaning economic activity is taxed equally.

Some people say that these are also three reasons to favor a national sales tax.

My response is that they’re correct. In simple terms, a national sales tax (such as the Fair Tax) is like a flat tax but with a different collection point.

If you want more details, I often explain the two plans are different sides of the same coin. The only difference is that the flat tax takes of slice of your income as you earn it and the sales tax takes a slice of your income as you spend it. But neither plan has any double taxation of income that is saved and invested. And neither plan has loopholes to lure people into making economically irrational decisions.

Instead of class warfare and/or social engineering, both plans are designed to raise money is the least-damaging fashion possible.

So even though I’m mostly known for being an advocate of the flat tax, I have no objection to speaking in favor of a national sales tax, testifying in favor of a national sales tax, or debating in favor of a national sales tax.

With this bit of background, you can understand why it caught my attention that an economics professor at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) wrote a column for Forbes with the provocative title of “I Will Support The Fair Tax When Its Backers Tell The Truth”.

Professor Dorfman writes that “such a consumption tax has much to recommend it from an economic point of view” but then warns that he “cannot support the Fair Tax as long as its backers continue to make implausible claims for their proposed reform.”

So what are the implausible claims? Let’s check them out and see if his friendly criticism is warranted.

He first expresses skepticism about the claim that take-home pay will rise to the level of gross pay under a Fair Tax, particularly given the assertion that prices won’t rise.

…the odds are that your gross pay will shrink over time under the Fair Tax. …employers can offer workers lower pay because of the lower cost of living (same prices, but higher take home pay). Because workers evaluate pay offers based on the purchasing power of that pay, the same competitive forces that will lower prices after the removal of business taxes, will lead to lower pay for employees in the long run as the labor market adjusts.

I suspect Professor Dorfman’s critique is correct, but I don’t think it matters. Workers understandably care first and foremost about the purchasing power of their paycheck, and that won’t be negatively impacted.

The Professor than looks at whether the Fair Tax gets taxes the underground economy.

…let’s tackle the claim that the Fair tax will do a better job of collecting taxes on criminals, the underground economy, and those who underreport their income. The idea is that people may hide some of their income or that drug dealers and others in the underground economy do not report their income, but that everyone spends money so the Fair Tax will tax everyone. Unfortunately, this claim is not true… Retailers are just as capable of underreporting revenue and not sending in the corresponding Fair Tax as people are of underreporting their income. …The incentive to avoid such consumption taxes will only increase when the rate is four or five times what it is now. If you don’t believe consumption taxes suffer from collection problems, go ask Greece.

And he looks specifically at taxing criminal activity.

Another reason that the Fair Tax will not capture extra revenue from illegal activities is that it only switches which side of the transaction is missed by the tax system. Currently, while drug dealers may not report their income, the people who buy drugs are paying with after-tax income. Under the Fair Tax, the drug dealers will pay tax when they spend their drug profits. However, unless the drug dealer sends in the Fair Tax on their sales, the drug buyers will now avoid tax on their purchases. Under either tax system, one side of the underground transactions will be paying taxes and one will not.

I think Professor Dorfman is correct, particularly in his explanation that drug dealers and other criminals will not collect sales tax when they peddle their illicit goods.

And he’s also correct when he says that the Fair Tax won’t collect all taxes on legal products.

But that doesn’t mean the Fair Tax is somehow flawed. Indeed, it’s quite likely that the underground economy will shrink under a national sales tax since the incentive to evade tax (on legal products) is a function of the tax rate. So if we replace the punitive high-rate internal revenue code with a low-rate Fair Tax, there will be a higher level of compliance.

But not zero evasion, so Fair Tax supporters exaggerate if they make that claim.

The next point of contention is whether the IRS can be repealed under a Fair Tax.

…some agency needs to collect all the sales taxes, ensure retailers are sending in the full amount, and handle all the mechanics of the prebate. The prebate requires this federal agency to know everyone’s family size and have a bank account or other method of sending out the prebate each month. So while individuals will have less interaction with the federal tax agency, there will still be some. For retail businesses, their interactions with federal tax officials will be at least as much as now, if not more.

The Professor is right, though this may be a matter of semantics. Fair Tax people acknowledge there will be a tax collector (the legislation creates an incentive for states to be in charge of collecting the tax), but they say that the tax authority under their system will be completely different than the abusive IRS we have today.

Last but not least is the controversy over whether everyone benefits under a Fair Tax.

…while Fair Tax proponents often act like nobody loses under the Fair Tax that is simply not possible. If the Fair Tax is implemented in a revenue neutral manner (collecting the same amount of total revenue as all the taxes it replaces), and some people win then other people must lose. Poor people pay roughly no tax either way, so the Fair tax would be neutral for them. The very rich will assumedly pay less since they spend a lower percentage of their income and spend more overseas. Thus, the suspicion is that the middle class will be paying more. One other group pretty sure to pay more is the elderly. The elderly have paid income tax while earning income, and under the Fair Tax would suddenly pay high consumption taxes right when their income drops and their spending increases. In the long run, this is not a problem, but early in a Fair Tax regime, the elderly definitely are losers.

Once again, Professor Dorfman is making a good point (and others have made the same point about the flat tax).

My response, for what it’s worth, is that supporters of both the flat tax and national sales tax should not be bound by revenue neutrality. Especially if the revenue-estimating system is rigged to produce bad numbers. Instead, they should set the rate sufficiently low that the overwhelming majority of taxpayers are net winners.

And in the long run, everyone can be a net winner if the economy grows faster.

And that, as Professor Dorfman agrees, is the main reason for tax reform.

The Fair Tax really has much to recommend it. It is simpler than the current system. It causes fewer distortions in the daily economic decisions that people make. The main distortion it does introduce is positive: to encourage saving and discourage consumption which would make the country wealthier in the long run.

Though I would quibble with the wording of this last excerpt. I don’t think the Fair Tax creates a pro-savings distortion. Instead, it removes an anti-savings bias. Just like the flat tax.

Now let me add a friendly criticism that Professor Dorfman didn’t address.

Advocates of the Fair Tax correctly say that their proposal shouldn’t be implemented until and unless the income tax is fully repealed. But as I explain in this video, that may be an impossible undertaking.

To be blunt, I don’t trust politicians. I fear that they would gladly adopt some form of consumption tax while secretly scheming to keep the income tax.

P.S. Actually, what I really want is a very small federal government, which presumably could be financed without any broad-based tax. Our nation enjoyed strong growth before that dark day in 1913 when the income tax was imposed, so why concede that politicians today should have either a flat tax or Fair Tax? But that’s an issue for another day.

Read Full Post »

The No-Comparison Comparison of Reagan v Obama

Have you ever wondered why, in a hypothetical match-up, the American people would elect Ronald Reagan over Barack Obama in a landslide?

And have you ever wondered why Americans rate Reagan as the best post-WWII President and put Obama in last place?

There are probably a couple of reasons for these polling numbers, but I suspect one reason for the gap is that Reaganomics generated much better results than Obamanomics.

I’ve already made this point using data from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, but today we’re going to look at some updated information from Tom Blumer, who put together a strong indictment of Obama’s record for PJ Media.

He points out that both Reagan and Obama inherited very weak economies. But that’s where the similarity ends. Reagan pushed an agenda of free markets and small government while Obama doubled down on Bush’s statism.

The results, he explains, confirm that big government is the problem rather than solution.

Obama’s economic policy, with the help of a pliant Federal Reserve, has been built on the notion that massive deficit spending and easy money would bring the economy roaring back and “stimulate” job growth.  The former strategy was tried during the 1930s. It only succeeded in lengthening the Great Depression, as the nation’s unemployment rate never fell below 12 percent. The fact that Team Obama insisted on making the same mistakes, while at the same time unleashing the federal government’s regulatory apparatus to harass the economy’s productive participants, is enough to make reasonable people question whether this president and his administration have ever truly wanted to see a genuine recovery occur. On the other hand, five years of strong, solid and uninterrupted economic performance following a serious recession is how you create a positive economic legacy. Ronald Reagan’s post-recession economy — an economy which faced arguably greater challenges when he took office, particularly double-digit inflation and a prime interest rate of 20 percent — did just that.

Those are strong words, but I think the accompanying graphics are even more persuasive.

Here’s a chart comparing post-recession growth for both Presidents.

And here’s the data on jobs, including breakdown of private-sector employment gains.

And here are the numbers for median household income. Once again, Obama is presiding over dismal numbers, particularly when compared to the Gipper.

What’s especially ironic, as I explained back in March, is that rich people are the only ones who have experienced income gains during the Obama years.

So Obama claims that his class-warfare policy is designed to hurt the wealthy, but the rest of us are the ones actually paying the price.

Let’s look at one final chart.

These poverty numbers weren’t included in the article, but I think they’re worth sharing because you can see that both the poverty rate and the number of Americans in poverty fell once Reagan’s policies took effect in the early 1980s. Under Obama, by contrast, the best we can say is that the numbers aren’t getting worse.

One final point, I imagine that some leftists will argue that Mr. Blumer is being unfair by looking only at Reagan’s post-1982-recession numbers.

That’s a fair point…but only if you think that the recession was caused by Reagan’s policies. Like most economists, I disagree with that accusation. The recession almost certainly was an unavoidable consequences of inflationary monetary policy in the 1970s.

Indeed, Reagan deserves special praise for his willingness to endure short-term pain in order to address that problem and set the stage for future prosperity. Obama, by contrast, wants continued money printing by the Fed in hopes that easy money can cure problems caused by easy money.

As you might imagine, I’m skeptical about that approach.

P.S. Here’s some snarky humor comparing the Gipper with Obama. And if you liked the story of what happens when you try socialism in the classroom, you’ll also enjoy this video of Reagan schooling Obama.

Read Full Post »

A Possible Peace Treaty Between Statists and Libertarians?!?

A few years ago, I shared a satirical divorce decree that would allow conservatives and liberals to amicably separate into two different countries.

This seemed like a good idea, particularly since another piece of satire suggested that Canada was being overrun by statists who were upset by the Tea Party election of 2010.

And don’t forget that I wrote a serious column in 2012 speculating whether advocates of limited government should be the ones moving north instead.

But rather than divorce or mass emigration, what if we could resolve our differences and live together in peace and tranquility?

Y’all may be thinking I’m smoking some of that stuff that libertarians want to legalize, but I want to make a serious point.

Or, to be more specific, I want to test whether our statist friends are serious.

I’m motivated by this presumably legitimate Facebook message. It’s designed, I’m guessing, to poke fun at conservatives who utilize government while simultaneously complaining about government.

Having read this diatribe, I want to make two points, and then end with a proposal.

My first point is that many of the supposed benefits of government would exist even if the public sector disappeared tomorrow.

There are some government-owned utilities, but I think we all recognize that most electricity is generated by the private sector.

Private satellite companies and private news companies would provide weather forecasts in the absence of NOAA and NASA.

Private food companies and private drug companies would have big incentives to provide safe products in the absence of government inspections.

People would know how to tell time without the government.

Auto companies would have every reason to produce safe cars even if there was no regulation.

I could continue, but you get the point.

Which brings me to my second point. The person who put together this screed conveniently left out the programs that account for the lion’s share of government spending.

Why doesn’t the author include agriculture programs?

Why doesn’t the author include the Ponzi Scheme otherwise known as Social Security?

Why doesn’t the author include all the money spent to subsidize other nations’ defenses?

Why doesn’t the author include bankrupt and counterproductive health care entitlements such as Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid?

Why doesn’t the author include the Department of Housing and Urban Development?

Why doesn’t the author include the corporate welfare at the Department of Commerce?

Why doesn’t the author include the welfare programs that trap people in dependency?

Why doesn’t the author include unemployment insurance payments that subsidize joblessness?

I could continue, but you get the point.

Which brings me to my proposal.

I’m guessing that the person who put together the diatribe wanted to make the point that there are some activities of government that produce value. And even though I think he is generally wrong to imply that these things wouldn’t happen without government, I’m willing to bend over backwards in the interests of reaching a deal.

So here’s a challenge for our friends on the left: If the author agrees to get rid of the programs he doesn’t include, I’ll agree to keep all the programs he does mention.

In other words, let’s have a compromise, which is what they recommend in all the articles about relationships. Both sides meet in the middle.

Yes, I know that means too much government, but it also means that the public sector would be a far smaller burden than it is today. Indeed, I would be surprised if the total burden of government spending exceeded 10 percent of our economic output under this proposed agreement. Which would put us somewhat close to the growth-maximizing size of government.

And don’t forget that this compromise also means that the already-legislated expansions in the burden of government spending presumably wouldn’t happen.

So my proposal doesn’t mean libertarian utopia. But it also means we don’t suffer welfare state dystopia.

Now we just have to see whether our statist friends will accept this proposed peace agreement.

Or will we find out that they’re the hypocrites, not the folks who post comments on Fox News and Free Republic?

Read Full Post »

The IMF’s Continuous – and Destructive – Love Affair with Higher Taxes

Since I’m an economist, I generally support competition.

But it’s time to admit that competition isn’t always a good idea. Particularly when international bureaucracies compete to see which one can promote the most-destructive pro-tax policies.

For instance, I noted early last year that the bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were pushing a new scheme to increase the global tax burden on the business community.

Then I wrote later in the year that the International Monetary Fund was even more aggressive about pushing tax hikes, earning it the label of being the Dr. Kevorkian of the world economy.

That must have created some jealousy at the OECD, so those bureaucrats earlier this year had a taxpalooza party and endorsed a plethora of class-warfare tax hikes.

Now the IMF has responded to the challenge and is pushing additional tax increases all over the world.

For example, the bureaucrats want much higher taxes on energy use, both in the United States and all around the world.

This chart from the IMF shows how much the bureaucracy thinks that the tax should be increased just on coal consumption.

The chart doesn’t make much sense, particularly if you don’t know anything about “gigajoules.” Fortunately, Ronald Bailey of Reason translates the jargon and tells us how this will impact the average American household.

The National Journal reports that the tax rate would be $8 per gigajoule of coal and a bit over $3 per gigajoule of natural gas. Roughly speaking a ton of coal contains somewhere around 25 gigajoules of energy, which implies a tax rate of $200 per ton. …The average American household uses about 11,000 kilowatt hours annually, implying a hike in electric rates of about $1,100 per year due to the new carbon tax. Since the average monthly electric bill is about $107, the IMF’s proposed tax hike on coal would approximately double how much Americans pay for coal-fired electricity. A thousand cubic feet (mcf) of natural gas contains about 1 gigajoule of energy. The average American household burns about 75 mcf of natural gas annually so that implies a total tax burden of $225 per residential customer.

To be fair, the IMF crowd asserts that all these new taxes can be – at least in theory – offset by lower taxes elsewhere.

…we are generally talking about smarter taxes rather than higher taxes. This means re-calibrating tax systems to achieve fiscal objectives more efficiently, most obviously by using the proceeds to lower other burdensome taxes. The revenue from energy taxes could of course also be used to pay down public debt.

Needless to say, I strongly suspect that politicians would use any new revenue to finance a larger burden of government spending. That’s what happened when the income tax was enacted. That’s what happened when the payroll tax was enacted. That’s what happened when the value-added tax was enacted.

If you think something different would happen following the implementation of an energy tax, you win the grand prize for gullibility.

But let’s give the IMF credit. The bureaucrats are equal opportunity tax hikers. They don’t just want higher taxes in the United States. They give the same message everywhere in the world.

Here are some excerpts from an editorial about Spanish fiscal policy in the Wall Street Journal.

Madrid last month cut corporate and personal tax rates, simplified Spain’s personal-income tax system and vowed to close loopholes. That’s good news… So leave it to the austerity scolds at the International Monetary Fund to call for tax increases. …Specifically, the Fund wants Spain to raise value-added taxes, alcohol and tobacco excise taxes, tourism taxes, and various environmental and energy levies: “It will be critical to protect the most vulnerable by increasing the support system for them via the transfer and tax system.”

Gee, I suppose that we should be happy the IMF didn’t endorse higher income taxes as well.

The good news is that the Spanish government may have learned from previous mistakes that tax hikes don’t work.

Rather than heed this bad advice, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro are cutting government spending and eliminating wasteful programs to reduce pressure on the public fisc. Public spending amounted to 44.8% of GDP in 2013, which is still too high but down from 46.3% in 2010. The government projects it will fall to 40% by 2017. …Madrid has also made clear that it believes private growth is the real answer to its fiscal woes. …In other words, economic growth spurred by low taxes and less state intervention yields more revenue over time. If Mr. Montoro can pursue the logic of that insight, there’s hope for Spain’s beleaguered economy.

I’m not overly confident about Spain’s future, but it is worth noting that, according to IMF data, government spending has basically been flat since 2010 (after rising by an average of about 10 percent annually in the previous three decades).

So if the politicians can maintain fiscal discipline by following my Golden Rule, maybe Spain can undo decades of profligacy and become the success story of the Mediterranean.

Let’s hope so. In any event, we know some Spanish taxpayers have decided that they’re tired of being fleeced.

We have one final example of the IMF’s compulsive tax-aholic instincts.

Allister Heath explains that the bureaucracy is pushing for a plethora of new taxes on the U.K. economy.

The IMF wants an increase in the VAT burden.

…the IMF wants to get rid or significantly reduce the zero-rated exemption on VAT, which covers food, children’s clothes and the rest. While it is true that the exemptions reduce economic efficiency, ditching them would necessitate a big hike in benefits and a major uplift in the minimum wage, which would be far more damaging to the economy’s performance and ability to create jobs for the low-skilled. It’s a stupid idea and one which would destroy any government that sought to implement it, with zero real net benefit. It would be a horrendous waste of precious political capital that ought instead to be invested in real reform of the public sector.

And an increase in energy taxes.

The report also calls for a greater reliance on so-called Pigouvian taxes, which are supposed to discourage externalities and behaviour which inflicts costs on others. It mentions higher taxes on carbon and on congestion as examples. But what this really means is that the IMF is advocating a massive tax increase on motorists, even though there is robust evidence which suggests that they already pay much more, in the aggregate, than any sensible measure of the combined cost of road upkeep and development, pollution and congestion.

And higher property taxes.

It gets worse: these days, one cannot read a document from an international body that doesn’t call for greater taxes on property. This war on homeowners is based on the faulty notion that taxing people who own their homes doesn’t affect their behaviour, which is clearly ridiculous. This latest missive from the IMF doesn’t disappoint on this front: it calls for the revaluation of property for tax purposes, which is code for a massive increase in council tax for millions of homes, especially in London and the home counties.

Understandably, Allister is not thrilled by the IMF’s proposed tax orgy.

The tax burden is already too high; increasing it further would be a terrible mistake. The problem is that spending still accounts for an excessively large share of the economy, and the political challenge is to find a way of re-engineering the welfare state to allow the state to shrink and the private sector to expand. The model should be Australia, Switzerland or Singapore, countries that boast low taxes and high quality services.

And I particularly like that Allister correctly pinpoints the main flaw in the IMF’s thinking. The bureaucrats look at deficits and they instinctively think about how to close the gap with tax hikes.

That’s flawed from a practical perspective, both because of the Laffer Curve and because politicians will respond to the expectation of higher revenue by boosting spending.

But it’s also flawed from a theoretical perspective because the real problem is that the public sector is far too large in all developed nations. So replacing debt-financed spending with tax-financed spending doesn’t address the real problem (even if one heroically assumes revenues actually materialize and further assumes politicians didn’t exacerbate the problem with more spending).

Here’s a remedial course for politicians, international bureaucrats, and others who don’t understand fiscal policy.

P.S. Wise people have speculated that international bureaucrats are quick to urge higher taxes because they don’t have to pay taxes on their lavish salaries.

P.P.S. This isn’t the first time the IMF has proposed massive tax hikes on energy consumption.

Read Full Post »

Libertarianism and Human Decency

Some people confuse being libertarian with being libertine.

I’m sometimes asked, for instance, if I’m a libertarian because I want to smoke pot or do other drugs.

I respond that I’ve never done drugs and have no desire to use drugs.

Then I’m asked if I’m a libertarian because I want to gamble.

I respond by saying that I don’t gamble, even when I’m in Las Vegas or some other place where it’s legal.

Sometimes I’m asked if I’m libertarian because I want to use prostitutes.

I respond by explaining that I’d never patronize a prostitute because I want to at least be under the illusion that a woman actually wants to be with me.

At this point, some people conclude I’m boring, and that may be true, but this is also the point where I try to educate them about the libertarian philosophy.

I give them the usual message about small government and free markets, but I also explain that libertarians don’t believe that government should persecute people for victimless crimes.

This doesn’t mean we think it’s good to use drugs or that we personally approve of prostitution. And it doesn’t mean we’re oblivious to the downsides of gambling.

The libertarian message is simply that prohibition makes matters worse, not better. For instance, prohibition gives government the power to behave in reprehensible ways.

Let’s look at two examples, starting with this disturbing and powerful video from Reason TV (warning, both the subject material and language are not for the faint of heart).

Having watched the video, now ask yourself whether you think this is an appropriate way for governments to be using our tax dollars?

Remember, we’re not talking about cops busting people for impaired driving. That’s totally legitimate, regardless of whether they’re impaired because of drugs or booze.

The question is whether cops should look for excuses to pull people over simply in hopes of finding that they have some pot. And when they don’t find drugs, should they then go through obscene efforts in hopes of finding some contraband?*

Our second example isn’t as disturbing, at least on a physical level, but it should be equally troubling if we believe in decent and humane society.

It seems that SWAT teams have too much time on their hands and are now conducting raids on old folks playing cards.

On Saturday, state and local authorities raided a monthly poker tournament at a bar in the city of Largo, after an investigation into unlawful gambling, the Tampa Bay Times reported. The Nutz Poker League, which was running a free game open to the public at Louie’s Grill and Sports Bar at the time of the crackdown, said on its Facebook page that some of the police were in “full riot gear” and had their “weapons drawn.” …One woman present described the event in a blog post: “Today, while out playing poker with this poker league, we were raided by the [Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco], all with men and women officers wearing black masks so we couldn’t see their faces. We were forced (by a threat of going to jail) to place our hands on the table where they could see them and to stay there until we were told.” …Luke Lirot, an attorney involved with the matter, told Card Player that players took cell phone photos and video of the raid, and that they were “ordered by officers to delete” the material. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the undercover investigation, dubbed “Operation Cracked Aces,” had been ongoing for months prior to the bust.

The community group that runs the recreational league has an appropriately libertarian view of this costly harassment.

“The ‘crime’ here is the waste of valuable public resources, and the misguided efforts to enforce an archaic law that was never intended to be used to criminalize events such as the one here, where six individuals were unjustly arrested and terrified, and now face prosecution,” the league said. “If state statutes can be exploited and stretched to criminalize these types of events, legislation needs to be adopted to clear up this unnecessary abuse.” Nutz Poker added that the raid was an example of “tyrannical [law] enforcement.”

By the way, the Florida raid is not an isolated incident.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the Baltimore Sun.

…at the Lynch Point Social Club in Edgemere, police say, …dozens of men would meet regularly to play no limit Texas Hold ‘Em poker games and gamble on electronic machines. County police said it was all off the books and against the law, and busted the club’s members in a raid involving a tactical unit last week. The organizer and dealers were arrested and face charges. Almost immediately after our story posted, there was a quick backlash against police. The story’s been shared nearly 200 times on Facebook and generated 40 comments as of this writing… commenters had no tie to the event but were angered at an investigation they believe was a waste of police resources. …But police say games like the ones hosted in Edgemere are against the law and must be enforced, and may even put the players at risk for becoming victims of a robbery.

Here’s the bottom line: A bunch of guys want to pass the time by playing cards and making wagers. They’re not hurting anybody else, yet cops decide to send a “tactical unit” to conduct a raid.

Once again, I’m glad there’s a backlash against the police. Cops should be protecting innocent people, not harassing them.

Or killing them.

And this is why libertarianism is a philosophy of human decency. We don’t believe in using coercive government power against people who aren’t harming others.

*I’m thinking an involuntary cavity search might be worth it if I got a $900,000 award after suing the government.

P.S. Since I feel very confident about libertarian principles, I don’t object to sharing anti-libertarian humor.

Here’s the latest example.

I’ve previously shared a cartoon with the same theme, and that post also makes the should-be-obvious point that fire departments would exist in a libertarian world.

And that link also has many more examples of libertarian humor.

Read Full Post »

The Trans-Atlantic Version of Great Moments in Government-Run Healthcare

When government suppresses the free market and takes over the healthcare sector, you get some really odd results.

Consider these stories from Sweden:

 A man sewing up his own leg after getting frustrated with a long wait.

The government denying a wheelchair to a double amputee because the bureaucrats decided his impairment might not be permanent.

Speaking of amputations, an unfortunate man was put on such a long waiting list that his only treatment, when he was finally seen, was to have his penis removed.

Today, we’re going to augment that list. But not with another story from Sweden, which is actually a much better country in terms of public policy than most folks realize.

Instead, we’re going to look at some great moments in government-run healthcare in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

Our first story is from the Chicago Tribune and it deals with Medicaid and Medicare spending.

But we’re not going to look at the aggregate data. Those numbers are very sobering, to be sure, and you can click here and here to learn more about that problem.

Instead, we’re going to drill down into the details and get some up-close evidence of why the programs are so costly. Simply stated, providers learn how to bilk the government.

A few years ago, Illinois’ Medicaid program for the poor noticed some odd trends in its billings for group psychotherapy sessions. Nursing home residents were being taken several times a week to off-site locations, and Medicaid was picking up the tab for both the services and the transportation.  And then there was this: The sessions were often being performed by obstetricians and gynecologists, oncologists and urologists — “people who didn’t have any training really in psychiatry,” Medicaid director Theresa Eagleson recalled. So Medicaid began cracking down, and spending plummeted after new rules were implemented. …Illinois doctors are still billing the federal Medicare program for large numbers of the same services, a ProPublica analysis of federal data shows. Medicare paid Illinois providers for more than 290,000 group psychotherapy sessions in 2012 — more than twice as many sessions as were reimbursed to providers in New York, the state with the second-highest total. Among the highest billers for group psychotherapy in Illinois were three OB-GYNs and a thoracic surgeon. The four combined for 37,864 sessions that year, more than the total for all providers in the state of California. They were reimbursed more than $730,000 by Medicare in 2012 just for psychotherapy sessions, according to an analysis of a separate Medicare data set released in April.

Some of the specific examples are beyond belief. Keep in mind as you read the next passage that there are only 365 days in a year, and only about 261 workdays.

Of the Illinois OB-GYNs billing for group psychotherapy, Dr. Josephine Kamper had the highest number of sessions. She was paid for 10,399 sessions in 2012, at a cost to Medicare of $207,980. …Another OB-GYN, Lofton Kennedy Jr., billed for 9,154 group psychotherapy services. He declined to comment. The third-highest-billing OB-GYN, Philip Okwuje, charged Medicare for 8,584 group therapy sessions.  

Illinois isn’t the only place where taxpayers are getting ripped off.

A Queens, N.Y., primary care doctor, Mark Burke, was paid for more sessions than anyone else in the country — 20,841. He accounted for nearly one in every six sessions delivered in the entire state of New York in Medicare, separate data show. He did not return messages left at his office. Another large biller was Makeba Gordon, a social worker in Detroit. She was reimbursed for nearly 5,000 group therapy sessions for her 26 Medicare patients, an average of 190 each. She also billed for 2,820 individual psychotherapy visits for the same 26 patients, who allegedly would have received an average of 298 therapy sessions apiece in 2012. Gordon could not be reached for comment.

And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the bureaucracy in Washington doesn’t seem overly worried about this preposterous waste of money.

Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in an email that Medicare has no policy regarding which physicians may perform group psychotherapy. During such sessions, “personal and group dynamics are discussed and explored in a therapeutic setting allowing emotional catharsis, instruction, insight, and support,” according to rules set out by one of Medicare’s contractors.

The second story comes from the United Kingdom.

Regular readers know that the government-run healthcare system in the United Kingdom is an ongoing horror story of denied care, sub-standard care, and patient brutality (click here to see some sickening examples).

You would think the U.K.’s political class would respond by trying to use money more effectively.

You would be wrong. The bureaucrats somehow have decided that tax monies should be used to finance a sperm bank, even though private sperm banks already exist.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the Daily Mail.

Britain is to get its first NHS-funded national sperm bank to make it easier for lesbian couples and single women to have children.For as little as £300 – less than half the cost of the service at a private clinic –  they will be able to search an online database and choose an anonymous donor on the basis of his ethnicity, height, profession and even hobbies. …The National Sperm Bank will be based at Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, which currently runs an existing NHS fertility clinic and recruits sperm donors from the local population. Funded by a £77,000 Government grant, the bank will be run by the National Gamete Donation Trust (NGDT) which this year received  an additional £120,000 of public money to organise egg and sperm donation.

Some have criticized the initiative because it will purposefully increase the number of fatherless children.

…the move – funded by the Department of Health – is largely designed to meet the increasing demand from thousands of women who want to start a family without having a relationship with a man. Critics last night called it a ‘dangerous social experiment’ that could result in hundreds of fatherless ‘designer families’. …Ms Witjens rejected suggestions that children suffer adverse consequences from lacking a father figure. …Ms Witjens pointed to the removal of the reference to a ‘need for a father’ in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, when taking account of a child’s welfare when providing fertility treatment.

I’m sympathetic to the argument that children do best in conventional households with fathers, but my main reaction to this story is that government shouldn’t try to either penalize or subsidize unconventional households.

And a government-sponsored sperm bank definitely falls into the latter category.

But I’m not surprised. Governments love to squanders other people’s money, and the U.K. government has considerable expertise (if you can call it that) in this regard.

Heck, the U.K. healthcare system is even financing boob jobs. But we’re not talking about reconstructive surgery for women who had mastectomies. They pay for breast augmentation for women who claim “emotional distress.”

Though maybe the U.K. government deserves a special prize. It developed a giveaway program that was so convoluted that nobody signed up to take the money.

Read Full Post »

Should American Taxpayers Subsidize Israel’s Defense?

I rarely delve into foreign policy and defense issues. And when I do, such as my post about the conflict in Ukraine, it’s usually because it gives me an opportunity to draw attention to a topic that is in my bailiwick (in the case of Ukraine, it gave me an excuse to write about federalism).

With this caveat in mind, let’s turn our attention to the Middle East. Unless you’re a hermit living in a remote cave, you presumably know that Israel is locked in another fight with Hamas.

I’ve previously explained that I’m very sympathetic to the notion that Israel has a right to defend itself.

But supporting Israel’s right to self defense doesn’t mean I should foot the bill. Yet that’s what’s happening. According to Wikipedia, Washington sends about $3 billion per year to subsidize Israel’s military.

And now that amount will be even larger because Congress just approved another $225 million to help finance Israel’s missle-defense system.

Congress approved a $225 million package to replenish Israel’s missile defenses with its last order of business before a five-week recess… The House’s 395-8 vote in favor late Friday followed Senate adoption of the legislation by voice vote earlier in the day. The money is directed toward restocking Israel’s Iron Dome, which has been credited with shooting down dozens of incoming rockets fired by Palestinian militants over 3½ weeks of war. …Iron Dome has enjoyed strong U.S. technological and financial support. Throughout its history, the U.S. has provided more than $700 million to help Israel cover costs for batteries, interceptors, production costs and maintenance, the Congressional Research Service said. The total already appeared set to climb above $1 billion after Senate appropriators doubled the Obama administration’s request for Iron Dome funding for fiscal 2015. Now it seems likely to rise even further.

But this doesn’t mean everyone is happy about all this spending.

Some libertarian-leaning fiscal conservatives opposed the added subsidies, or at least wanted Congress to come up with offsetting cuts.

Despite almost universal support for Israel in Congress, the Iron Dome money appeared in doubt only a day ago as Senate efforts stalled after an effort by Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma to find cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for the aid.  …Voting against the measure in the House were…Republicans Justin Amash of Michigan, Walter Jones of North Carolina, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Mark Sanford of South Carolina.

For what it’s worth, I applaud those four House Republicans.

I’m motivated in part by a desire to limit the burden of government spending in America, but I also think that Israel easily could afford more military outlays if it pared back its overly generous welfare state.

If you look at the IMF data, government spending consumes about 43.8 percent of Israel’s economic output. And according to the CIA Factbook, Israel’s military budget amounts to about 5.7 percent of GDP.

I’m not a math genius, but that certainly suggests to me that Israel’s government is diverting about 38 percent of economic output for non-military spending.

If national defense is important and worthwhile (and it is), then Israel should prioritize and reduce domestic outlays.

Heck, that’s what Roosevelt did during World War II and what Truman did during the Korean War. If you don’t believe me, look at lines 31-34 of this OMB spreadsheet.

By the way, some people accuse these GOPers of being anti-Israel, but I think that charge is grossly unfair. I’m not personally close to any of the Republicans who voted against the Iron Dome funding, but I’ve met and talked to all of them and I’ve followed their careers. Suffice to say that I’ve never heard even the slightest hint that any of them harbor any anti-Israel or anti-Jewish sentiments.

Indeed, here’s some of what Justin Amash wrote back in 2012.

Israel is our closest friend in a very troubled region. Our national defense benefits from Israel’s ability to defend itself and to serve as a check against neighboring authoritarian regimes and extremists. Assisting with training and the development of Israel’s military capacity allows the U.S. to take a less interventionist role in the region. I am hopeful that American troops soon can leave the region and Israel and its neighbors can live in peace without U.S. aid or involvement.

The last sentence is a pretty good description of libertarian foreign policy: Be prepared to defend ourselves, but don’t look for trouble outside our borders.

P.S. The government of Israel pays for people who do nothing but pray. Which means that my tax dollars are picking up part of the tab. Prayer is presumably a good thing. Just don’t ask me to pay for it.

P.P.S. While Israel’s government does dumb things, the governments opposing Israel sometime engage in truly evil acts.

P.P.P.S. If you want to learn more about the libertarian approach to foreign policy, my Cato colleagues are the real experts. I also call your attention to these thoughts from Mark Steyn, George Will, and Steve Chapman.

Read Full Post »