Even More Evidence that the OECD Is the Worst International Bureaucracy

What’s the worst international bureaucracy?

• There’s certainly a strong argument the International Monetary Fund deserves that award. I’ve even referred to the IMF as the Dr. Kevorkian of the world economy.
• The United Nations also could claim the award since it wastes lots of money and routinely promotes bad policy across the globe.
• Let’s not forget the World Bank, which has a long track record of subsidizing bigger government and even produced a “report card” that promoted higher taxes.
• And if I lived on the other side of the Atlantic, I’d be sorely tempted to list the European Commission, which is a clown car of bureaucracy and statism.

But I think the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has them all beat, particularly if we grade on a per-dollar-spent basis.

Just consider the OECD’s work on inequality. The bureaucrats recently published a study that claimed inequality somehow undermined growth.

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Schoenfeld of Dreihaus Capital Management explains why the study is deeply flawed. He starts with a summary of what the OECD would like folks to believe.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently published a report, “In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All,” that claimed rising income inequality from 1990-2010 depressed cumulative growth across its member countries by 4.7%. The OECD’s suggested solution: government-led redistribution, funded via tax increases on “wealthier individuals” and “multinational corporations.”

But Schoenfeld explains the OECD’s research is riddled with misleading use of statistics.

From 2011-13, according to the World Bank, the five most unequal countries grew nearly five times faster (3.9% cumulative annual average) than the others (0.84%). By using a 2010 cutoff, the OECD has skewed its findings. Consider Greece. From 1999-2012, its Gini coefficient “improved” by 6% to .34 from .36—more than any other OECD country. …Greece’s redistributive social transfer spending also grew most quickly among OECD peers from 2000-12. But Greece’s economy has shrunk by more than 20% since 2010.

Here’s another example.

…the income-tax rate is a subpar proxy for redistribution policy. …A more representative proxy for redistribution is government expenditure as a percentage of GDP, which encompasses all government spending on the provision of goods, services, subsidies, and social benefits. From 1995-2012, OECD member countries that increased government expenditures as a percentage of GDP grew 30% slower than member countries that trimmed government expenditure as a percentage of the economy over that span—average annual growth of 1.9% compared with 2.5%.

Gee, who would have guessed that bigger government leads to less growth? I’m shocked, shocked.

And who would have guessed that the OECD produces research with dodgy numbers? Knock me over with a feather!

Though I must say that the sloppiness in this inequality study is trivial compared to the junk-riddled methodology of the OECD’s poverty study, which actually purported to show that there’s more deprivation in America than there is in poor nations such as Greece, Turkey, and Portugal.

Which gives me an opening to highlight what I wrote about this OECD study. I suggested that “the bureaucracy’s ‘research’ now is more akin to talking points from the Obama White House” and highlighted some utterly preposterous conclusions of the study.

We’re supposed to believe that Spain, France, and Ireland have enjoyed better growth. I guess France’s stagnation is just a figment of our collective imaginations. And those bailouts for Spain and Ireland must have been a bad dream or something like that.

Some folks may question whether the OECD is really a leftist bureaucracy. Or at least they may wonder whether I go overboard in my criticisms.

For what it’s worth, I do give the crowd in Paris some praise when good research is produced.

But imagine that the OECD is a student who gets a B on one test and fails every other exam. At some point, isn’t it safe to assume we have a remedial pupil?

And here’s some very strong proof. It turns out that the OECD is even further to the left than the Obama Administration.

I’m not joking. Check out these excerpts from an item in Politico’s Morning Tax.

…the U.S. is definitely not on the same page as its allies. The split was apparent at last week’s OECD conference in Washington to discuss the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan… Robert Stack, deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at Treasury, suggested that the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project was being driven less by a desire for sound policy than by foreign countries’ domestic politics and a desire for more revenue.

I wrote just last week that the BEPS plan is a naked revenue grab by high-tax nations and I find it remarkable that a senior official at the Obama Treasury Department agrees with me.

P.S. This isn’t the first time the Obama Administration has been to the right of the OECD.

P.P.S. Speaking of remedial students, I wrote back in 2011 that ending the flow of American tax dollars to the OECD (the biggest share of the bureaucracy’s budget comes from the United States) should be a test of whether Republicans are serious about cutting back on wasteful government spending.

At what point do I change the GOP grade from “incomplete” to “F”?