Positive and Negative Trends in Global Economic Liberty

My favorite annual publication from the Heritage Foundation, the Index of Economic Freedom, has just been released.

Like the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and, to a lesser extent, the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, the Heritage Foundation survey is filled with interesting data on economic liberty in various nations.

We’ll start by sharing the global map. It’s good to be green, especially dark green. But it’s bad to be orange and even worse to be red.

Sadly, there are only six “free” jurisdictions.

Unsurprisingly, Hong Kong and Singapore are at the top, and I’m also not surprised to see New Zealand and Switzerland in the next two positions.

What’s especially impressive is that four of the six jurisdictions managed to increase their score.

Now let’s look at the “mostly free” nations.

Note how the Nordic nations all get reasonably good scores. As I’ve repeatedly explained, they have onerous welfare states, but they largely compensate by being very pro-free market in other policy areas (one interesting quirk is that Iceland ranks #11 in the Heritage Index but only #59 in the Fraser rankings).

The United States, for what it’s worth, improved its score but still doesn’t crack the top 10.

Since a majority of readers are from the United States, let dig into the details.

Here’s a breakdown of America’s score. I am befuddled at how the U.S. improved on government spending, but all the other variables make sense.

Pay special attention to the decline in trade freedom.

Now let’s look at a few other countries that merit special attention.

Here’s data for the past 15 years on Iceland, Taiwan, and Chile.

I include Iceland merely because I’m intrigued by the wide divergence in how the country is ranked by Heritage and Fraser.

And I include Chile because I’m worried about the decline in recent years.

Taiwan, meanwhile, deserves mention because it continues to slowly but surely improve – a process that hopefully won’t stop, thus allowing Taiwan to eventually converge with Hong Kong and Singapore.

Now let’s shift to the Baltic nations.

I’ve been a big fan of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, but I’ve been worried about a recent drift in the wrong direction.

And that’s apparent in the Heritage data. This worries me since those countries should be further liberalizing and reforming to help counteract grim demographic trends.

By the way, I have similar concerns about Slovakia, though that nation’s drift in the wrong direction started several years sooner

Let’s close our discussion by looking at the unfortunate nations in the bottom category.

If you guessed the North Korea was the most repressed of the “repressed” nations, congratulations. It’s not just that it’s in last place, it wins that dubious distinction by a wide margin.

Though at least the North Koreans are trending in the right direction, albeit with an almost-too-small-to-measure improvement of just 0.1.

Cuba is #178 out of #180, yet still managed to go from absolutely awful to breathtakingly terrible with a -4.1 change in its score.

Speaking of awful and terrible, Venezuela is next to last. It remains even below Cuba, notwithstanding a small increase of 0.7.

P.S. I’m saddened, but not surprised, that there was a big drop in the score for South Africa. The only good news is that it still is nowhere close to being another Zimbabwe. At least not yet.

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New CBO Numbers Confirm that Modest Spending Restraint Is the Ideal Way of Balancing the Budget

The Congressional Budget Office just released it’s annual Budget and Economic Outlook, and that means I’m going to do something that I first did in 2010 and most recently did last year.

I’m going to show that it’s actually rather simple to balance the budget with modest spending restraint.

This statement shocks many people because they’ve read about out-of-control entitlement spending, pork-filled appropriations bills, big tax cuts, and trillion-dollar deficits.

But  the first thing to understand when contemplating how to fix America’s fiscal problems is that tax revenues, according to the new CBO numbers, are going to increase by an average of nearly 5 percent annually over the next 10 years. And that means receipts will be more than $2.1 trillion higher in 2029 than they are in 2019.

And since this year’s deficit is projected to be “only” $897 billion, that presumably means that it shouldn’t be that difficult to balance the budget.

By the way, I don’t even think balance should be the goal. It’s far more important to focus on reducing the burden of government spending. After all, the economy is adversely affected if wasteful outlays are financed by taxes, just as the economy is hurt when wasteful outlays are financed by borrowing.

In other words, too much government spending is the disease. Deficits are best understood as a symptom of the disease.

But I’m digressing. The point for today is simply that the symptom of borrowing can be addressed if a good chunk of that additional $2.1 trillion of new revenue is used to get rid of the $897 billion of red ink.

Unfortunately, the CBO report projects that the burden of government spending also is on an upward trajectory. As you can see from our next chart, outlays will jump by about $2.6 trillion by 2029 if the budget is left on autopilot.

The solution to this problem is very straightforward.

All that’s needed is a bit of spending restraint to put the budget on a glide path to balance.

I’m a big fan of spending caps, so this next chart shows the 10-year fiscal outlook if annual spending increases are limited to 1% growth, 2% growth, or 2.5% growth.

As you can see, modest spending discipline is a very good recipe for fiscal balance.

Our final chart adds a bit of commentary to illustrate how quickly we could move from deficit to surplus based on different spending trajectories.

I’ll close with a video from 2010 that explains why spending restraint is the best way to achieve fiscal balance. Especially when compared to tax increases.

The numbers are different today, but the analysis hasn’t changed.

As I noted at the end of the video, balancing the budget with spending restraint may be simple, but it won’t be easy.

If we want spending to grow, say, 2% annually rather than 5% annually, that will require some degree of genuine entitlement reform. And it means finally enforcing some limits on annual appropriations.

Those policies will cause lots of squealing in Washington. But we saw during the Reagan and Carter years, as well as more recently, that spending discipline is possible.

P.S. The video also exposed the dishonest way that budgets are presented in Washington.

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The Evidence-Based Case for Free Trade

Last November, I shared a one-minute video from Freedom Partners on the economics of trade.

Here’s a full-length (but still only four minutes) treatment of the issue from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

The first part of the video is a quick glimpse at some of the academic evidence for open trade, and I hope it helps make the case against protectionism.

I then cite some country-specific examples, including how Herbert Hoover’s protectionism contributed to the economic misery of the Great Depression.

Argentina is another bad example mentioned in the video. It used to be one of the world’s richest countries, but it plummeted in the rankings in part because of its protectionist policy of “import substitution.”

The video also mentions the examples of China and India. Since I think this point is especially compelling, I want to take this opportunity to briefly elaborate on my comments in the video.

First, let’s establish that both nations did liberalize trade. Here’s a chart from Economic Freedom of the World, and you can see that there was dramatic liberalization starting about 1990.

Both nations are still a long way from total free trade (Singapore and Hong Kong, for instance, respectively get scores of 9.29 and 9.32), but it goes without saying that there was considerable liberalization in China and India.

And how did that work out?

Trade liberalization was a slam-dunk success. Based on data from the World Bank, here’s a look at how China and India started converging with the United States after opening to the world economy.

To be sure, both nations still have a long way to go. And it’s highly unlikely that either nation will ever fully converge to American living standards unless there is a lot more pro-market reform. Not just in trade, but all facets of economic policy.

But as I mentioned in the video, the reforms that already have occurred – particularly trade liberalization – have contributed to huge reductions in poverty in China and India.

Given all this evidence, I’ll close with a version of my two-question challenge. Can anybody identify a nation that has prospered by moving to protectionism (h/t: the USA in the 1800s is not a good answer) or a nation that has suffered because of trade liberalization?

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Philadelphia’s Soda Tax Backfired (for Everyone other than Politicians)

I’ve periodically opined about why politicians should not try to control people’s behavior with discriminatory taxes, such as the ones being imposed on soda.

And I’ve cited some examples of how these taxes backfire.

• The big drop in soda purchases after a tax on sugary drinks was imposed in Berkeley.
• The big drop in soda sales after a big tax on sugary products in Mexico.
• The big drop in soda purchases expected to occur following Seattle’s new tax.

If the following headlines are any indication, we can add Philadelphia to that list.

For instances, this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Or this story from the local CBS affiliate.

These examples reinforce my view that it is not a good idea to let meddling politicians impose more taxes in an effort to control people’s behavior.

Some of my left-leaning friends periodically remind me, however, that there’s a difference between anecdotes and evidence. There’s a lot of truth to that cautionary observation.

To be sure, I could simply respond by saying a pattern is evident when a couple of anecdotes turns into dozens of anecdotes. And when dozens become hundreds, surely it’s possible to say the pattern shows causality.

That being said, it is good to have rigorous, statistics-based analysis if we really want to convince skeptics.

So let’s look at the results of some new academic research from scholars at Stanford, Northwestern, and the University of Minnesota. We’ll start with the abstract, which nicely summarizes their findings about the impact of Philadelphia’s big soda tax.

We analyze the impact of a tax on sweetened beverages, often referred to as a “soda tax,” using a unique data-set of prices, quantities sold and nutritional information across several thousand taxed and untaxed beverages for a large set of stores in Philadelphia and its surrounding area. We find that the tax is passed through at a rate of 75-115%, leading to a 30-40% price increase. Demand in the taxed area decreases dramatically by 42% in response to the tax. There is no significant substitution to untaxed beverages (water and natural juices), but cross-shopping at stores outside of Philadelphia completely o↵sets the reduction in sales within the taxed area. As a consequence, we find no significant reduction in calorie and sugar intake.

Here are some of their conclusions.

We draw several lessons about the effectiveness of local sweetened-beverage taxes from these analyses. First, the tax was ineffective at reducing consumption of unhealthy products. Second, in terms of revenue generation, the tax was only partly effective due to consumers substituting to stores outside of Philadelphia. Third, low income households are less likely to engage in cross-shopping, and instead are more likely to continue to purchase taxed products at a higher price at stores in Philadelphia. The lower propensity for low income households to avoid the tax through cross-shopping leads to a relatively larger tax burden for those households. In summary, the tax does not lead to a shift in consumption towards healthier products, it affects low income households more severely, and it is limited in its ability to raise revenue.

If you’re wondering why consumers responded so strongly, here’s a chart from the study showing the price difference after the tax was imposed.

The bottom numbers in Figure 3 show that some sales still occurred in the city, but a persistent gap between city sales and suburban sales appeared.

And here’s what happened to sales inside the city (taxed) and outside the city (untaxed).

Wow. This data makes me wonder if suburban sellers will start contributing to the Philadelphia politicians who have generated this windfall?

Others have noticed how the tax is hurting rather than helping.

The Wall Street Journal opined about the failure of Philly’s soda tax.

When Philadelphia became the first major U.S. city to pass a soda tax in 2016, Mayor Jim Kenney said it would improve public health while funding universal pre-K. Two years in, the policy hasn’t delivered on that elite ideological goal. But the tax has come at the expense of working people… On Jan. 2, Brown’s Super Stores announced the closure of a ShopRite on Haverford Avenue. The supermarket is close to the city limit, and customers discovered they could avoid the soda tax by shopping outside Philly. …the once-profitable store began losing about $1 million a year. …That means fewer opportunities for workers with a criminal record. Mr. Brown’s supermarkets employ more than 600 of them, with the majority in Philadelphia. Some of the ex-cons have become his most-valued employees.

And Kyle Smith explained in National Review how the tax backfired.

Philadelphia’s outlandish soda tax is what Democratic-party politics looks like when it lets its freak flag fly. So many classic elements are there: (failed) social engineering and “think of the children!” on one side, paid for with a punitive tax on poor people and destroyed businesses, which means destroyed jobs, which in turn means lives upended. …Now that beer is, in some cases, cheaper than soda in Philadelphia, alcohol sales are up sharply. …the total loss attributable to the tax in sales of all items was $300,000 a month per store. Other, untaxed drinks also suffered sales declines within the city, suggesting people were simply saving up their shopping trips for when they left town.

I don’t feel compelled to add much to what’s been cited.

Though I will cite a headline from the Seattle Times to reinforce one of the points in the academic study about consumers bearing the cost of the tax rather than the soda companies.

And my one modest contribution to all this analysis is this comparison of the winners and loser from Philadelphia’s new tax.

For what it’s worth, similar comparisons could be developed for just about every action by every government. Academics call this “public choice” while ordinary people realize it’s just common sense.

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Carbon Tax Salesmanship: A Case Study of Political Dishonesty

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t believe in using dodgy numbers or nonsensical analysis – even if that would help my side in a policy debate.

And it goes without saying that I also don’t like when the other side is dishonest. But I’m not talking about my left-leaning friends who have genuine (albeit misguided) views on things such as Keynesian economics or the minimum wage.

I’m talking about people who deliberately dissemble and prevaricate in hopes of advancing their policy agenda.

Consider, for instance, the new carbon tax that has been introduced by Congressmen Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Patrick Rooney (R-FL). The core features of the bill are:

• A $15-per-ton carbon tax that increases $10 each subsequent year until it reaches $100.
• A new entitlement program giving money to all legal American residents, including children.
• A new tax on consumers who buy imports from nations without similar taxes on energy usage.
• A supposed adjustment and easing of existing regulations governing carbon emissions.

There’s obviously a serious policy debate to have about both the general concept as well of the individual components of this type of legislation, and I’ve periodically added my two cents to the discussion.

But what irks me is that the sponsoring lawmakers are openly and deliberately lying about a key part of their plan. Here’s the relevant section from their talking points.

The claim about “revenue neutrality” is a stunning level of dishonesty, even by Washington standards.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if the government imposes a tax and then also creates a program to give money to people, that’s not revenue neutrality.

Was Obamacare “revenue neutral” because all the new taxes were balanced out by the handouts and subsidies that the law created for the big insurance companies?

Of course not.

And a new carbon tax doesn’t magically become “revenue neutral” because new revenues are matched by new spending.

To be sure, supporters can argue that their plan is “deficit neutral,” and that would be legitimate (even though I would argue that this wouldn’t be the case in the long run because of the adverse economic impact of new taxes and new spending).

But “revenue neutral” is a bald-faced lie.

The Daily Caller reported on this amazing example of deceptive advertising, citing the good work of Paul Blair of Americans for Tax Reform.

The bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus claims it is pushing a “revenue-neutral” carbon tax, but legislation proposed Thursday would hike taxes by at least $1 trillion over the next decade… Florida Reps. Ted Deutch, a Democrat, and Francis Rooney, a Republican, reintroduced a bill Thursday that would place a $15-per-ton tax on carbon emissions in 2019. The tax would rise by $10-a-year increments until it hits nearly $100 per ton. …Though Rooney claims the tax is “revenue-neutral,” the plain text of the bill does not include any reciprocal tax cuts to balance out the burden of the added tax on emissions… “Historically and for anyone engaged in tax policy, the definition of ‘revenue-neutral’ is and always has been if you increase a tax, the amount of revenue it generates must be offset by an equal tax cut elsewhere,” Blair said. …Blair said…that the “apology checks” sent as carbon dividends will be treated as new spending and do not negate a new tax burden.

By the way, just in case anyone thinks I’m imposing some weird, libertarian-ish, meaning to “revenue neutral,” you may want to look at how the left-leaning Tax Policy Center defines the term.

Revenue-neutral. A term applied to tax proposals in which provisions that raise revenues offset provisions that lose revenues so the proposal in total has no net revenue cost or increase.

I often disagree with the folks at the Tax Policy Center, but I’ve never questioned their honesty.

So when we both agree on the definition of ‘revenue neutral,” this is slam-dunk confirmation that it’s preposterously dishonest to count new spending as an offset to a tax increase.

P.S. Some of my friends and allies who supported the Fair Tax sometimes played fast and loose with the truth. That plan would have required the government to send “prebate” checks to households to partly compensate people for the new tax, yet supporters would argue that this expenditure shouldn’t count as a new entitlement program. While my first choice for tax reform is the flat tax, I certainly think a national sales tax would be a far better way to tax than the mess we have today, but that did not justify mischaracterizing the plan.

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Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which Nation Has the Biggest Welfare State of All?

When I think about social welfare spending, I mostly worry about recipients getting trapped in dependency.

But I also feel sorry for taxpayers, who are bearing ever-higher costs to finance redistribution programs.

Today’s column won’t focus on those issues. Instead, we’re going to utilize new OECD data to compare the size of the welfare states in developed nations.

We’ll start with the big picture. Here it total redistribution spending, measured as a share of economic output, for selected countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Nobody will be surprised, I assume, to see that France, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, and Italy have the biggest welfare states.

The United States is in the middle of the pack. American taxpayers might be surprised to learn, though, that they finance a bigger welfare state than the ones that exist in Canada, Iceland, and the Netherlands.

The overall numbers are important, but it’s also educational to consider the various components.

And the largest chunk of social spending in most nations is for their old-age programs. The biggest burdens are found in Greece, Italy, France, Portugal, and Austria. The United States, once again, is in the middle of the pack.

By the way, keep in mind that there are many factors that determine why some nations spend more than others.

• How generous are benefits? – This is often measured as the “replacement rate,” which compares retirement benefits to income during working years.
• When can people retire? – Some countries allow people, or some classes of people, to get benefits while relatively young. Others are more stringent.
• Does a country have an aging population? – Demographic changes already are beginning to have a large effect on the finances of some systems.
• Is there a private savings system? – Nations such as Switzerland, Australia, Chile, and the Netherlands have significant private retirement savings.

Now let’s look at government spending on health.

Here’s the area where the United States is more extravagant than almost every other nation. Only France spends more money.

Actually, since per-capita GDP is significantly larger in the United States than in France, American taxpayers spend more on a per-person basis.

Some people will observe, with great justification, that the data for the United States may be a measure of the inefficiency of the American system rather than taxpayer generosity. This is a topic for another day.

Last but not least, let’s look at traditional welfare. In other words, cash assistance to the working-age population.

The fiscal burden of this spending is highest in Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Luxembourg. The United States, meanwhile, is comparatively frugal.

P.S. Here are a couple of caveats for number crunchers and policy wonks.

First, there are methodological challenges when comparing OECD nations. Eastern European nations tend to be significantly less prosperous than Western European nations, thanks to decades of communist enslavement. So looking at this data does not really allow for apples-to-apples comparisons. Moreover, there are a handful of developing nations that belong to the OECD, such as Mexico and Turkey, so comparison are effectively meaningless. And Chile is on the cusp of becoming a fully developed nation so it’s in its own category.

Second, as I briefly mentioned above, nations have different levels of per-capita GDP. If we look at the last chart, Austria and Spain spend a similar share of GDP on welfare, but since Austria is a richer nation, its taxpayers actually finance a lot more per-capita welfare spending. The same is true if you compare Canada and Estonia, Sweden and Slovenia, and Germany and Greece.

P.P.S. There was virtually no welfare state in OECD nations prior to the 1930s and very small welfare states until the 1960s. For what it’s worth, the huge reduction in poverty in those nations occurred before the welfare state.

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Privatize TSA for Better Security and Faster Lines…and to Avoid Delays and Hassles During Government Shutdowns

My previous columns about the Transportation Security Administration have focused on bureaucratic inefficiency and incompetence (as well as laughable examples of “security theater”).

Today, let’s take advantage of the shutdown and focus instead on why TSA should be disbanded so that airports can use more efficient private security firms.

An article in Reason gives some important details on why privatized airport screening is the best way of making lemonade out of shutdown lemons.

…the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported that 10 percent of its agents were absent from their posts, up from three percent in the same time period last year. …The result has been longer wait times, closed security checkpoints… While it’s difficult to feel any sympathy at all for the professional privacy violators at the TSA… It’s also an unfortunate consequence of federalizing so much of crucial airport operations, says Baruch Feigenbaum, a transportation expert… There are already a number of airports in the country that have contracted out their passenger screenings to private companies through the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program (SPP), helping to immunize them from the effects of the shutdown. This includes San Francisco International Airport (the busiest airport to participate in the SPP program), where some 1,200 privately employed security screeners have continued to be paid despite all the budget drama in Washington. …Contracting out these services would ensure that they don’t come to a screeching halt every time the government shuts down. Putting that distance between the government and security and safety services would also improve oversight.

For all intents and purposes, the folks at Reason want to make a virtue out of necessity. The government shutdown is making air travel an even bigger hassle, so why “let a crisis go to waste” when this is a great opportunity to push for sweeping reform?

As a frequent flyer, I say Amen.

Here’s a good example. Because of my support for the Georgia Bulldogs, I have to endure the Atlanta airport several times each year. It is one of the worst airports I’ve ever experienced.

It’s so bad that the city’s politicians are exploring private security.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed…said he wants to take a closer look at privatizing security screening at the Atlanta airport to address the issue of long lines. …Southwell…earlier this year sent a letter to the Transportation Security Administration, raising the idea of privatizing security screening at the Atlanta airport if long lines were not addressed. …Reed said Monday that the city has been in conversations with San Francisco International Airport, which privatized its security screening. “We’re going to explore that and see if it’s the best decision,” Reed said. “The lines are very concerning to me…. We’re going to do every single thing we can do, and it’s going to have urgency to it.”

It’s quite possible that Atlanta’s politicians are merely bluffing and that their real goal is to simply get more TSA bureaucrats, but I hope this is a serious initiative and that Atlanta escapes the TSA.

Experts who study this issue says private contractors are both more efficient and safer.

For those who want to understand the background on this issue, here are a couple of very good articles.

The first piece, from Skift, explain how we got to the current situation.

Airports could actually do something about the hated agency, and a few are weighing a radical option: firing TSA screeners and hiring private replacements. The frustration over queue times—which have topped two and three hours at airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte and Denver—has prompted new attention by airport executives to the TSA’s little-known  Screening Partnership Program, in which the federal agency solicits bids for a contractor to handle airport screening. The contractors must follow the same security protocols as federal officers, with similar wages and benefits. At Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, …administrators are “discussing a variety of options,” including replacing the TSA with a private contractor, said Deborah Ostreicher, assistant aviation director at the airport. Sky Harbor officials have considered their TSA service “less than satisfactory for many months,” she said. The Phoenix airport is a hub for American Airlines Group Inc., which has blamed the TSA delays across the country for causing more than 70,000 passengers to miss flights so far this year ….The former general manager of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport  wrote a letter to the TSA in February warning that the world’s busiest airport was “conducting exhaustive research” into privatized security screening.

There are 22 airports that already have opted out.

The power to replace TSA employees with private screeners dates to the birth of the agency in 2002, shortly after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks. Congress designated five airports at the time to offer screening by private firms as a way to compare the federal approach. Another 17 smaller airports have since joined the original five. The most recent to make the switch to private security screeners, Punta Gorda Airport in Florida, expects to finish the transition next week. San Francisco International is the largest U.S. airport with private screeners. Now other large airports are researching private-sector alternatives.

One of the benefits of privatization is that contractors have more flexibility to do a better job.

…airports that have switched to private firms say they consider the contractors more responsive and better able to adjust staffing to address traffic surges and lulls. …said Brian Sprenger, director at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport in Montana, which began private screening in 2014. “We now have a little bit more say in ensuring that the customer service side is a little more elevated in the process.”

Though TSA is reluctant to allow more airports to escape.

Christopher Bidwell, vice president of security for Airports Council International-North America, faulted the TSA in the past for making it difficult for airports to switch to private screeners, regularly denying airports’ applications for the program. …Any airport wishing to switch must be pass a security and cost analysis by the TSA to demonstrate that hiring private contractors will not harm the agency’s budget or compromise security.

A column in City Journal adds some more historical background, noting that the failures on 9/11 were the result of government guidelines.

Even by Washington standards, the creation of the TSA was a blunder of colossal proportions. Experts from around the world warned at the time—in 2001—that federalizing airport security would be ruinously expensive, inefficient, and unsafe. Israel and many European countries had already rejected similar systems. …Democrats who controlled the Senate were especially eager to gain campaign contributions from tens of thousands of new federal employees. …Legislators and bureaucrats scapegoated the private security companies that had been screening passengers for the airlines. Citing the lapse in security on September 11… It was the federal government, not the private screeners, that set the policy allowing small knives and box cutters to be brought onto planes. Federal guidelines prevented airlines from arming pilots and reinforcing cockpit doors. The feds also stopped the private security firms from using an existing system to identify high-risk passengers, which would have singled out some of the hijackers for special screening.

Here’s some great data on the superiority of private airport screeners.

…the TSA blames its failures on lack of funding. But it’s already spending way too much, as demonstrated in a congressional study comparing TSA screeners in Los Angeles with non-TSA screeners in San Francisco, one of the few airports allowed to run its own system, contracting with a private company. If LAX switched to the San Francisco model, the study concluded, it could cut its screening costs by more than 40 percent. The San Francisco private company’s screeners received the same salary and benefits as TSA screeners, but they were so much better trained and deployed that each one processed 65 percent more passengers than a TSA screener in Los Angeles. They apparently enjoyed better working conditions, too, because they were much less likely to quit their jobs. And in tests by federal investigators, they were three times better at detecting contraband.

Unfortunately, TSA has institutional hostility to private screeners.

Those results, as well as other research showing that private screeners get better ratings from passengers and airport managers, inspired congressional Republicans to pass legislation giving more airports the option of switching to private contractors. But, as anyone could have predicted in 2001, it’s not easy to get rid of a federal monopoly, especially now that unionized screeners can intimidate local politicians—as they did in blocking an attempt to replace them at Sacramento’s airport. Even if local officials stand up to the union, they still need to get permission from the TSA.

And, as noted in the Wall Street Journal, many politicians don’t care about the private sector’s superior performance because they’re more intreested in expanding bureaucracy.

TSA runs a Screening Partnership Program, which in theory allows an airport to “opt out” of TSA and bring in a certified private security firm. In a 2011 report, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure compared Los Angeles data with a private operation running San Francisco’s airport. A contract screener in San Fran moved through 65% more passengers than TSA employees in L.A. But only a handful of airports participate, as TSA chooses the security company and micromanages the contract. That isn’t a partnership. Congress could stipulate that an airport manage its own bidding and operations; the government would remain a safety regulator. …Congress nationalized airport screening after 9/ll, as Democrats saw a political opening to add thousands of new union workers. But after nearly a decade and a half, TSA’s legend of incompetence grows.

Sadly, growing incompetence is not matched by growing pressure for privatization.

But hopefully that will change.

Let’s close with a rather humorous Venn diagram.

P.S. For more TSA humor, see this, this, this, this, this, and this.

P.P.S. In addition to letting airports escape the TSA, we should copy Canada and achieve better results at lower cost by privatizing air traffic control

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Government Shutdowns and Economic Activity

I don’t care about the current shutdown battle, but I still feel compelled to add my two cents when people make silly arguments about the economy suffering because government is temporarily spending less money.

This is actually a two-part debate.

From a microeconomic perspective, there is some genuine disruption for affected federal bureaucrats, even if they eventually will get full – and lavish – compensation for their involuntary vacations. And some federal contractors are being hit as well.

There’s also a debate about the macroeconomic impact, with some making the Keynesian argument that government spending is somehow a stimulant for the economy.

I’ve endlessly explained why Keynesian argument is bad in theory and a joke in reality.

In this interview, I tried to make a more nuanced point, explaining that we should focus more on gross domestic income (GDI), which measures how we earn our national income, rather than gross domestic product (GDP), which measures how we allocate national income.

I’m not sure I got my point across effectively in a 30-second sound bite, but it’s a point worth making since people who understand GDI are much less susceptible to the Keynesian perpetual-motion-machine argument.

But enough from me.

Harold Furchtgott-Roth, in a column for the Wall Street Journal, analyzes the potential macroeconomic consequences of the shutdown.

Does the U.S. government shutdown endanger economic growth? It has led to missed paychecks… Yet these employees represent approximately 0.5% of all American workers… The effect of the furloughs on gross domestic product is likely small. …U.S. GDP is more than $20 trillion annually, or approximately $55 billion daily. The daily compensation of furloughed federal workers is about $52.5 million, or less than 0.1% of GDP. This figure does not include affected government contractors, but even doubling or tripling this figure yields only a small share of GDP. …The net effect of the partial shutdown on direct salaries and wages will primarily be to delay, but not reduce, income for the affected families. …Maybe that’s one reason the stock market, a barometer of expectations of future economic growth, has been unperturbed by the budget impasse. The Dow and the S&P 500 are up nearly 9% since the shutdown began Dec. 22. Experience also gives reason for optimism. The last major government shutdown occurred in 1995-96. It affected the entire federal government, not only part of it. Yet U.S. GDP growth increased from 2.7% in 1995 to 3.8% in 1996.

That final sentence is key.

The Keynesians are always predicting bad consequences when there’s some sort of policy that limits government spending.

But the real-world outcome is always different, as we saw with the sequester.

Steve Malanga, writing for the City Journal, takes a microeconomic perspective on the shutdown.

I’ve seen no evidence that the shutdown will affect me and my family. I’ve heard no friend, neighbor, or relative even mention it. Virtually everyone I know outside of my professional life seems to be going about their business. Still, I’ve taken a thorough look at press coverage over the past two weeks and found nearly 500 stories on how the closure is supposed to affect our lives. …The press seems intent on convincing the rest of us that we’re at risk… Many headlines stoking fear contradict the articles they introduce. A story in the Guardian, for instance, was pitched as a tale of the shocking impact that the shutdown would have on a small rural town. Though the paper tells us the town is “in the grip of a partial government shutdown,” readers find little evidence of it. “We really haven’t noticed anything,” City Manager Mike Deal confesses. …a story in the Bangor Daily News noted that the Small Business Administration, which hands out government-subsidized loans to firms, won’t be making them during the shutdown. Still, the story notes, that’s not going to make much of a hit on the local economy, since the SBA has made just 2,687 loans in Maine since 2010, for an average of just 27 a month. …a story in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser entitled, “How the shutdown is affecting local breweries in Louisiana.” The problem, the owner of Bayou Teche Brewing explains, is that the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is responsible for approving labels for new beers, and the agency’s not working right now. “With every government shutdown that’s happened since we opened, we’ve had a beer needing label approval,” said Karlos Knott of Bayou. “And that results in beer we’re just having to sit on.”

Steve’s column reminds me of a piece I wrote back in 2013.

Which is why I wish one of the lessons we learned from the shutdown fight is that much of what government does is either pointless or counterproductive.

I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

Anyhow, no column on a government shutdown would be complete without some satire.

We’ll start with a sarcastic observation from Libertarian Reddit. Though it actually raises a serious point. I want to downsize Washington, but I don’t want any needless pain for bureaucrats. Yet shouldn’t we be similarly sensitive to the plight of folks in the private sector who suffer because of D.C.’s bad policies?

And it appears that government bureaucrats have figured out what to do with their hands now that they have extra time on their hands.

For what it’s worth, some bureaucrats engage in such recreation even when the government is open.

If you enjoy shutdown humor, you can find older examples here and here, and a new example here.

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Did Migration to America Make Scandinavia More Collectivist?

The most persuasive data, when comparing the United States and Scandinavia, are the numbers showing that Americans of Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian descent produce much more prosperity than those who remained in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.

This certainly suggests that America’s medium-sized welfare state does less damage than the large-sized welfare state in Scandinavian nations.

But maybe the United States also was fortunate in that it attracted the right kind of migrant from Scandinavia.

Let’s look at some fascinating research from Professor Anne Sofie Beck Knudsen of Lund University in Sweden.

If you’re in a rush and simply want the headline results, here are some excerpts from the abstract.

This paper examines the joint evolution of emigration and individualism in Scandinavia during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1920). A long-standing hypothesis holds that people of a stronger individualistic mindset are more likely to migrate as they suffer lower costs of abandoning existing social networks. …I propose a theory of cultural change where migrant self-selection generates a relative push away from individualism, and towards collectivism, in migrant-sending locations through a combination of initial distributional effects and channels of intergenerational cultural transmission. …the empirical results suggest that individualists were more likely to migrate than collectivists, and that the Scandinavian countries would have been considerably more individualistic and culturally diverse, had emigration not taken place.

If you’re interested in more detail, here are passages from the study.

We’ll start with the author’s description of why she studied the topic and what she wanted to determine.

People of Western societies are unique in their strong view of themselves… This culture of individualism has roots in the distant past and is believed to have played an important role in the economic and political development of the region… differences in individualism and its counterpart, collectivism, impact processes of innovation, entrepreneurship, cooperation, and public goods provision. Yet, little is known about what has influenced the evolution of individualism over time and across space within the Western world. …I explore the relationship between individualism and a common example of human behavior: migration. I propose a theory, where migration flows generate cultural change towards collectivism and convergence across migrant-sending locations.

Keep in mind, by the way, that societies with a greater preference for individualism generate much more prosperity.

Anyhow, Professor Knudsen had a huge dataset for her research since there was an immense amount of out-migration from Scandinavia.

During the period, millions of people left Europe to settle in New World countries such as the United States. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark experienced some of the highest emigration rates in Europe during this period, involving the departure of approximately 25% of their populations. …Total emigration amounted to around 38% and 26% in Norway and Sweden respectively.

Here are some of her findings.

I find that Scandinavians who grew up in individualistic households were more likely to emigrate… people of individualistic mindsets suffer lower costs of leaving existing social networks behind… the cultural change that took place during the Age of Mass Migration was sufficiently profound to leave a long-run impact on contemporary Scandinavian culture. …If people migrate based, in part, on individualistic cultural values, migration will have implications on the overall evolution of cultures. Emigration must be associated with an immediate reduction in the prevalence of individualists in the migrant-sending population.

Here is her data on the individualism of emigrants compared to those who stayed in Scandinavia.

As an aside, I find it very interesting that Scandinavian emigrants were attracted by the “American dream.”

…historians agree that migrants were motivated by more than hopes of escaping poverty. Stories on the ‘American Dream‘ and the view of the United States as the ‘Land of Opportunities‘ were core to the migration discourse. Private letters, diaries, and newspaper articles of the time reveal that ideas of personal freedom and social equality embodied in the American society were of great value to the migrants. In the United States, people were free to pursue own goals.

And this is why I am quite sympathetic to continued migration to America, with the big caveat that I want severe restrictions on access to government handouts.

Simply stated, I want more people who want that “American dream.”

But I’m digressing. Let’s now look at the key result from Professor Knudsen’s paper.

When the more individualistic Scandinavians with “get up and go” left their home countries, that meant the average level of collectivism increased among those remained behind.

Several observations are worth mentioning in light of the revealed actual and counterfactual patterns of individualism. First, one observes a general trend of rising individualism over the period, which is consistent with accounts for other countries… Second, the level of individualism would have been considerably higher by the end of the Age of Mass Migration in 1920, had emigration not taken place. Taking the numbers at face value, individualism would have been between 19.0% and 20.3% higher on average in Sweden, 17.8% and 27.9% in Norway, and 7.6% and 12.5% in Denmark, depending on the measure considered.

These charts capture the difference.

To wrap this up, here’s a restatement of the key findings from the study’s conclusion.

I find that people of an individualistic mindset were more prone to migrate than their collectivistic neighbors. …Due to self-selection on individualistic traits, mass emigration caused a direct compositional change in the home population. Over the period this amounted to a loss of individualists of approximate 3.7%-points in Denmark, 9.4%-points in Sweden, and 13.6%-points in Norway. …The cultural change that took place during the Age of Mass Migration was sufficiently profound to impact cross-district cultural differences in present day Scandinavia. Contemporary levels of individualism would thus have been significantly higher had emigration not occurred. …The potential societal implications of the emigration-driven cultural change are of great importance. The period of the Age of Mass Migration was characterized by industrialization, urbanization, and democratization in Scandinavia. Individualism was generally on the rise, in part due to these developments, but it seems conceivable that the collectivistic turn caused by emigration played a role in subsequent institutional developments. While economic freedom is high in contemporary Scandinavia, the region is known for its priority of social cohesion and collective insurance. This is particularly clear when contrasting the Scandinavian welfare model with American liberal capitalism.

This is first-rate research.

Professor Knudsen even understands that Scandinavian nations still have lots of economic freedom by world standards.

Imagine, though, how much economic freedom those countries might enjoy if the more individualism-minded people hadn’t left for America? Maybe those nations wouldn’t have dramatically expanded their welfare states starting in the 1960s, thus dampening economic growth.

The obvious takeaway is that migration from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway to the United States was a net plus for America and a net minus for Scandinavia.

P.S. When she referred in her conclusion to “American liberal capitalism,” she was obviously referring to classical liberalism.

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The Statist (and Senseless) Agenda of Kamala Harris

It seems like every Democrat in the country plans to run against Trump in 2020 and presumably all of them will feel compelled to issue manifestos outlining their policy agendas.

Which gives me lots of material for my daily column. I’ve previously written about statist initiatives from Bernie Sanders and bizarre ideas put forth by Elizabeth Warren.

Today, let’s review the two big ideas that have been unveiled by Kamala Harris, the Senator from California who just announced her bid for the White House.

We’ll start with her idea to create a federal subsidy for rent payments. I wrote about this new handout last year, and warned that it would enrich landlords (much as tuition subsidies enrich colleges and health subsidies enrich providers).

Here’s some of what Professor Tyler Cowen wrote for Bloomberg about the proposal.

One of the worst tendencies in American politics is to restrict supply and subsidize demand. …The likely result of such policies is high and rising prices, restricted access and often poor quality. If you limit the number of homes and apartments, for example, but give buyers subsidies, that is a formula for exorbitant prices. That is what makes early accounts of Senator Kamala Harris’s economic plans so disappointing. …Consider Harris’s embrace of subsidies for renters, as reflected by her recent sponsorship of the Rent Relief Act of 2018. Given the high price of housing in many parts of the U.S., it is easy to see why the idea might have appeal. But the best and most sustainable way of producing cheaper housing is to build more homes and apartments. The resulting increase in supply will cause prices to fall… That is basic supply and demand, with supply doing the active work. The Harris bill, in contrast, calls for tax credits to renters. …There is an obvious problem with this approach. If you subsidize renters, that will push up the price of apartments. Furthermore, economic logic suggests that big rent increases are most likely in those cases where the supply of apartments is relatively fixed, a basic principle of what is called “tax incidence theory.” In sum, most of the gains from this policy would go to landlords, not renters.

In other words, this is a perfect plan for a politician who understands “public choice” theory.

Ordinary voters think they’re getting a freebie, but the benefits actually go to those with political influence and power.

Now let’s look at her $2.7 trillion tax cut. I believe that people should be allowed to keep the lion’s share of any money they earn, so my gut instinct is to cheer.

But it’s always good to be skeptical when a politician is offering something that sounds too good to be true.

Kyle Pomerlau of the Tax Foundation has done the heavy lifting and looked closely at the details. He has a thorough explanation of her plan and its likely impact.

The “LIFT the Middle-Class Act” (LIFT) would create a new refundable tax credit available to low- and middle-income taxpayers. …LIFT would provide a refundable credit that would match a maximum of $3,000 in earned income ($6,000 for married couples filing jointly). …The credit would begin to phase out for single taxpayers starting at $30,000 of adjusted gross income (AGI) and $80,000 for single taxpayers with children, and begin phasing out for married taxpayers at $60,000 of AGI. The phaseout rate for all taxpayers would be 15 percent. …LIFT’s impact on the economy is primarily through its effect on the labor force. LIFT phases in from the first dollar of earned income to the maximum credit of $3,000 per tax filer. It then phases out starting at different levels of income, depending on a tax filer’s marital status and whether they have children. These phase-ins and phaseouts create implicit marginal subsidies and tax rates that impact individuals’ incentive to work.

At the risk of oversimplifying, Harris is proposing a new version of the earned income credit.

And that means some taxpayers get subsidized for working and some taxpayers get penalized.

For taxpayers in the credit phaseout range, tax liability would increase by 15 cents for each additional dollar earned. This means that these taxpayers would face an additional implicit marginal tax rate of 15 percent, which would reduce these taxpayers’ incentive to work additional hours. In contrast, taxpayers in the phase-in range of the credit would get $1 for each additional $1 of income they earn. As such, these taxpayers would benefit from an effective marginal subsidy rate, or negative marginal tax rate, of 100 percent. A negative tax rate of 100 percent would increase the incentive for these taxpayers to work additional hours.

Kyle crunches the numbers to determine the overall economic impact.

While the positive labor force effects of the phase-in of the credit could offset the negative effect of the phaseout, we find that, on net, the size of the total labor force would shrink under this policy. This is primarily due to the large number of taxpayers that would fall in the phaseout range of the credit relative to the number of individuals that would benefit from the phase-in. …We estimate that the credit…would reduce economic output by 0.7 percent and result in about 825,906 fewer full-time equivalent jobs.

Here’s the relevant table from the Tax Foundation’s report.

This is remarkable. It would seem impossible to design a $2.7 trillion tax cut that actually hurts the economy, but Sen. Harris has succeeded in that dubious achievement.

For all intents and purposes, she has figured out how to have an anti-supply-side tax cut.

And there are two other problems that deserve attention.

• First, as noted in Kyle’s paper, the tax cut is “refundable.” This means that money goes to people who don’t pay taxes. In other words, it is government spending being laundered through the tax code. So Harris claims to be cutting taxes, but part of what she’s doing is expanding redistribution and making government bigger (and encouraging more fraud).
• Second, Harris is very cagey about how the numbers work in her proposal. Does she want the tax cuts (and new spending) financed by more borrowing? By printing money? By offsetting class-warfare tax increases? Some combination of the three? Whatever the answer, the negative economic damage will be substantially higher if financing costs are included.

Considering the poor design and upside-down economics of the rent subsidy scheme and the new tax credit, the bottom line is rather obvious: Kamala Harris wants to buy votes, and she has decided that it is okay to hurt the economy in hopes of achieving her political ambitions.

No wonder she fits in so well in Washington!

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The Green New Deal Is a Dangerous Fantasy

If nothing else, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gives me a lot to write about…and to laugh about.

I recently pontificated about her crazy idea to impose a top tax rate of 70 percent, which would reverse the very successful experiment we had in the 1980s (and presumably have a reverse effect on revenue as well).

Today, let’s look at the spending side of the fiscal equation.

AOC, as she is known, wants a dramatic increase in the burden of federal spending for her so-called “green new deal.”

Let’s examine the implications.

We’ll start with a supporter. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has a giant carbon footprint compared to the average person, but that naturally doesn’t stop him from endorsing policies that would put AOC’s onerous burdens on the less fortunate.

Barack Obama picked up the theme and made a Green New Deal part of his 2008 platform, but the idea just never took off. So I’m excited that the new Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have put forward their own takes on a Green New Deal… The goal is a ‘detailed national, industrial, economic mobilization plan’ to rapidly transition the country away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy, such as a solar, wind, and electric cars.” The Green New Deal that Ocasio-Cortez has laid out aspires to power the U.S. economy with 100 percent renewable energy within 12 years and calls for “a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one,” “basic income programs” and “universal health care,” financed, at least in part, by higher taxes on the wealthy. …it is time for the green movement to think big and make big demands…a portion of every dollar raised by a carbon tax in a Green New Deal would be invested in two new community colleges and high-speed broadband in rural areas of every state.

Now let’s look at the implications of such policies.

But before looking at fiscal and economic considerations, let’s briefly detour to ideology.

Jonah Goldberg of National Review has some fun examining the philosophical forerunners of Ocasio-Cortez’s plan.

…the Green New Deal…is a triumph of recycling. Not of plastic bags or soda cans, but of ideas. Specifically, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the impulses behind it. To her credit, Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) is fairly honest about her ideological recycling. …the New Deal itself was largely about war mobilization — without war. Roosevelt campaigned for president promising to adapt Woodrow Wilson’s wartime industrial policies to fight the Great Depression. …Nearly the entire structure of the New Deal was copied from Wilson’s “war socialism.” The National Recovery Administration was modeled on the War Industries Board. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was an update of Wilson’s War Finance Corporation. …breaking discipline was a punishable offense, which is why a tailor, Jacob Maged, was sentenced to 30 days in jail for charging too little to press a suit. …American liberalism has been recycling the same basic idea: The country needs to be unified and organized as if we are at war… The attraction stems from what John Dewey called “the social possibilities of war” — the ability to reorganize and unify society according to the schemes of planners and experts.

Gee, another New Deal. What could possibly go wrong?

Now let’s contemplate the practical implications.

We’ll start with Warren Henry’s article in the Federalist.

…the darling of democratic socialism proposed eliminating carbon emissions within 12 years. …The “Frequently Asked Questions” section accompanying her draft resolution claims it could be funded in the “same ways that we paid for the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs, the same ways we paid for World War II and many other wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments, new public banks can be created (as in WWII) to extend credit and a combination of various taxation tools (including taxes on carbon and other emissions and progressive wealth taxes) can be employed.” …Ocasio-Cortez now falls back on the comforting myth that everything is affordable by soaking the rich with higher income taxes. …Ocasio-Cortez half-concedes her plan is a fantasy… For an idea of how detached Ocasio-Cortez is from reality, consider that we get only 17 percent of our energy from renewables. …even if the golden geese of capitalism were to continue laying eggs in Ocasio-Cortez’s command-and-control economy, there will not be enough to make her statist omelet. Even if Ocasio-Cortez’s fever dream were technologically feasible, the burden of funding it would land on the middle class as well as the uber-wealthy. …This is not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has tried to pass off a fairy tale as a white paper. She recently claimed the $32 trillion cost of a Medicare-for-all plan could be funded by curbing fraud at the Pentagon. Not even PolitiFact could make that math work, given that our nation has not spent $32 trillion on defense since its founding.

In an article for FEE, Jarrett Stepman looks at the economics of AOC’s plan.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the avowed “democratic socialist” went with the predictable “tax the rich” formula in order to pay for a massive government program to combat climate change. …such a scheme would mean that her constituents in New York City would pay a max income tax rate of 82.6 percent… Perhaps New Yorkers deserve what they voted for, but does the country? …the tax hikes on the rich would be one of the least radical parts of the agenda. …moving the economy away from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy will come “at a cost of about $5.2 trillion over 20 years.” …this deal would instead rely on the ruthless bludgeoning of private industry and citizens through the levers of the state. …the plan calls for direct government intervention to be its “prime driver.” …The Green New Deal doesn’t just include environmentalist proposals… Among the liberal wish list items included, the Green New Deal contains a proposal for universal health care and a basic minimum income program to make up for all the jobs lost…this will all come with an immense cost. …How do Green New Deal proponents propose to pay for this extreme growth in government? …by massively hiking taxes and then borrowing and ultimately printing money. Then it would use public banks run by unaccountable bureaucrats to carry the whole thing out. …an American version of a Soviet-style five-year plan focused on command-and-control economic solutions that have proven to fail the world over. …The agony of a collapsing Venezuela…is a stark example of how badly this can end.

Milton Ezrati’s column in the City Journal further debunks AOC’s numbers.

…specific goals…include, among other things, expanding renewable-energy sources until they provide 100 percent of the nation’s power…upgrading every residence and industrial building in the U.S. for energy efficiency…eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions for industry and agriculture; funding “massive” investments… Ocasio-Cortez adds a long list of social objectives: providing training and education for the energy transition, including “job guarantees at a living wage for everyone who wants one”; …mitigating racial, regional, and gender-based inequalities; developing universal health-care and income-support programs… there were some 136 million housing units in the United States. Upgrading each unit to high standards of energy efficiency would cost, conservatively, at least $10,000 per home, adding up to a total cost of $1.3 trillion. Doing the same for industrial structures would easily exceed that amount. The single-payer health-care part would cost another $3 trillion or more, annually. Stabilizing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would add another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to the price tag—and all these still only account for three items on AOC’s list. …she would rely on debt, “printing money,” and government willingness to take an equity stake in some of the enterprises involved.

The bottom line is Ocasio-Cortez wants to dramatically expand the size and scope of government.

Some of her ideas would involve big increases in red tape, especially for the green parts of the Green New Deal (thus underscoring why it is rather naive for anyone to think the left would accept less regulation in exchange for a carbon tax).

But since I’m a fiscal policy person, I’m naturally concerned about what her grandiose plan would mean for the tax and spending burden.

Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute has used public sources to estimate the price tag. Here’s the new spending that AOC and her fellow travelers want to impose on the economy.

And below we have a menu of potential tax increases.

There are two things to realize.

• First, even if every single one of the tax increases is adopted, it doesn’t come close to paying for AOC’s wish list for new spending.
• Second, the big revenue sources (payroll taxes, VAT, income tax) are largely taxes on lower-income and middle-class taxpayers.

In other words, politicians talk big about screwing the rich, but the rest of us will be picking up the tab.

By the way, I can’t resist commenting on this second table. I realize Brian is merely following the tradition of budget scorekeepers at the JCT and CBO, but new revenues should not be categorized as “savings.” I would go with “grabbings” or “takings” instead.

Brian’s rhetorical sin doesn’t qualify him for the Bob Dole Award or the Charlie Brown Award, but surely there should be some consequences. Maybe we’ll create a Libertarian Re-education Camp and miscreants will be forced to listen to lectures from Dork 1, Dork 2, and Dork 3?

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Another “Useful Idiot” Seeks to Prop Up Cuba’s Thuggish Regime by Regurgitating Propaganda

There’s a long and sordid history of people in Western nations acting as dupes and apologists for communism.

This is especially the case with the wretchedly impoverished totalitarian outpost 90 miles south of Florida.

• President Obama lauded aspects of Cuba’s totalitarian regime when he visited in 2016.
• Jeffrey Sachs ranked Cuba higher on development goals than the United States.
• Jimmy Carter (and Jeremy Corbyn, Justin Trudeau, etc) gushed about Fidel Castro when the long-time dictator died.
• Numerous vapid celebrities have helped turn the thuggish and racist Che Guevera into a pop icon.

Based on what he wrote for the opinion pages of the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof belongs on that list of “useful idiots.”

Cuba…in health care…does an impressive job that the United States could learn from. …an American infant is, by official statistics, almost 50 percent more likely to die than a Cuban infant. By my calculations, that means that 7,500 American kids die each year because we don’t have as good an infant mortality rate as Cuba reports. …a major strength of the Cuban system is that it assures universal access. Cuba has the Medicare for All that many Americans dream about. …It’s also notable that Cuba achieves excellent health outcomes even though the American trade and financial embargo… Cuba overflows with doctors — it has three times as many per capita as the United States… Outsiders mostly say they admire the Cuban health system. The World Health Organization has praised it, and Ban Ki-moon, the former United Nations secretary general, described it as “a model for many countries.”

Kristof admits in his piece that there are critics who don’t believe the regime’s data, but it’s clear he doesn’t take their concerns seriously.

And he definitely doesn’t share their data. So lets take a close look at the facts that didn’t appear in Kristof’s column.

My first recommendation is to watch Johan Norberg’s video on the real truth about Cuba’s infant mortality.

But there’s so much more.

Jay Nordlinger authored the most comprehensive takedown of Cuba’s decrepit system back in 2007. Here are some of the highlights.

The Left has always had a deep psychological need to believe in the myth of Cuban health care. On that island, as everywhere else, Communism has turned out to be a disaster: economic, physical, and moral. Not only have persecution, torture, and murder been routine, there is nothing material to show for it. The Leninist rationalization was, “You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.” Orwell memorably replied, “Where’s the omelet?” There is never an omelet. …there is excellent health care on Cuba — just not for ordinary Cubans. …there is not just one system, or even two: There are three. The first is for foreigners who come to Cuba specifically for medical care. This is known as “medical tourism.” The tourists pay in hard currency… The second health-care system is for Cuban elites — the Party, the military, official artists and writers, and so on. In the Soviet Union, these people were called the “nomenklatura.” And their system, like the one for medical tourists, is top-notch. Then there is the real Cuban system, the one that ordinary people must use — and it is wretched. Testimony and documentation on the subject are vast. Hospitals and clinics are crumbling. Conditions are so unsanitary, patients may be better off at home, whatever home is. If they do have to go to the hospital, they must bring their own bedsheets, soap, towels, food, light bulbs — even toilet paper. And basic medications are scarce. …The equipment that doctors have to work with is either antiquated or nonexistent. Doctors have been known to reuse latex gloves — there is no choice. …So deplorable is the state of health care in Cuba that old-fashioned diseases are back with a vengeance. These include tuberculosis, leprosy, and typhoid fever. And dengue, another fever, is a particular menace.

Wow, I guess shortages extend well beyond toilet paper.

Next we have some very sobering data from a 2004 article in Canada’s National Post.

…a small bottle of tetracycline costs US$5 and a tube of cortisone cream will set you back as much as US$25. But neither are available at the local pharmacy, which is neat and spotless, but stocks almost nothing. Even the most common pharmaceutical items, such as Aspirin and rubbing alcohol, are conspicuously absent. …Antibiotics, one of the most valuable commodities on the cash-strapped Communist island, are in extremely short supply and available only on the black market. Aspirin can be purchased only at government-run dollar stores, which carry common medications at a huge markup in U.S. dollars. This puts them out of reach of most Cubans, who are paid little and in pesos. Their average wage is 300 pesos per month, about $12. …tourist hospitals in Cuba are well-stocked with the latest equipment and imported medicines, said a Cuban pediatrician, who did not want to be identified. …”Tourists have everything they need,… But for Cubans, it’s different. Unless you work with tourists or have a relative in Miami sending you money, you will not be able to get what you need if you are sick in Cuba. As a doctor, I find it disgusting.”

And here’s some scholarly research from Katherine Hirschfeld at the University of Oklahoma (h/t: Scott Johnson).

…the Cuban government continues to respond to international criticism of its human rights record by citing…praise for its achievements in health and medicine…the unequivocally positive descriptions of the Cuban health care system in the social science literature are somewhat misleading. In the late 1990s, I conducted over nine months of qualitative ethnographic and archival research in Cuba. During that time I shadowed physicians in family health clinics, conducted formal and informal interviews with a number of health professionals, lived in local communities, and sought to participate in everyday life as much as possible. Throughout the course of this research, I found a number of discrepancies between the way the Cuban health care system has been described in the scholarly literature, and the way it appears to be described and experienced by Cubans themselves. …After just a few months of research, …it became increasingly obvious that many Cubans did not appear to have a very positive view of the health care system themselves. A number of people complained to me informally that their doctors were unhelpful, that the best clinics and hospitals only served political elites and that scarce medical supplies were often stolen from hospitals and sold on the black market. Further criticisms were leveled at the politicization of medical care… Public criticism of the government is a crime in Cuba, and penalties are severe. Formally eliciting critical narratives about health care would be viewed as a criminal act both for me as a researcher, and for people who spoke openly with me. …One of the most readily apparent problems with the health care system in Cuba is the severe shortage of medicines, equipment, and other supplies. …Many Cubans (including a number of health professionals) also had serious complaints about the intrusion of politics into medical treatment and health care decision-making.

Three academics at Texas Tech University also found very troubling data when they investigated the nation’s health system (h/t: David Henderson).

With 11.1% of GDP dedicated to health care and 0.8% of the population working as physicians, a substantial amount of resources is directed towards reducing infant mortality and increasing longevity. An economy with centralized economic planning by government like that of Cuba can force more resources into an industry than its population might desire in order to achieve improved outcomes in that industry at the expense of other goods and services the population might more highly desire. …Physicians are given health outcome targets to meet or face penalties. This provides incentives to manipulate data. Take Cuba’s much praised infant mortality rate for example. In most countries, the ratio of the numbers of neonatal deaths and late fetal deaths stay within a certain range of each other as they have many common causes and determinants. …Cuba, with a ratio of 6, was a clear outlier. This skewed ratio is evidence that physicians likely reclassified early neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths, thus deflating the infant mortality statistics and propping up life expectancy. Cuban doctors were re-categorizing neonatal deaths as late fetal deaths in order for doctors to meet government targets for infant mortality. …Physicians often perform abortions without clear consent of the mother, raising serious issues of medical ethics, when ultrasound reveals fetal abnormalities because ‘otherwise it might raise the infant mortality rate’. …The role of Cuban economic and political oppression in coercing ‘good’ health outcomes merits further study.

The bottom line is that Cuba is a hellhole and statistics from a repressive regime can’t be trusted.

Though the real message of today’s column is that we should be revolted by people who are willing to be dupes for totalitarianism.

And I can understand why people willing to debase themselves in that way are so sensitive to criticism.

P.S. The New York Times has a pathetic history of covering up for the crimes of communism, most notably Walter Duranty, who was given a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 even though he despicably lied in his reports to promote Stalin’s horrid regime. He even covered up Stalin’s holocaust of the Ukrainian people. Even though Duranty’s evil actions are now public knowledge, the Pulitzer Prize Board has not revoked the award. The New York Times, to its credit, at least has acknowledged that Duranty lied to promote Stalin’s brutal dictatorship. One wonders if the newspaper eventually will apologize for Kristof.

P.P.S. I’m also not impressed that a former Secretary General of the U.N. endorsed Cuba’s health care system. After all, it was an official from the U.N. who praised the lack of obesity among the starving people of North Korea.

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Mocking the Horror of Communism

Today is a good opportunity to augment our collection of humor about socialism and communism.

Our first addition made me laugh out loud. Kudos to “writeidiaz” (who should have a contest with “TOOAJoyce” and “ItsMeKarlMarx” for best use of sarcasm).

 

Next we have a variation of the “real communism” or “real socialism” excuse.

Since socialist and communist regimes are great places to lose a lot of weight (albeit involuntarily), here’s an interesting way of diagnosing what’s wrong with your latest batch of cookies.

Excellent humor. Reminds me of the satire about communist electricity.

I encourage readers, the next time they see some vapid millennial wearing a Che t-shirt, to share these three examples.

P.S. We also need to include “REDACTED” and “Fathercommunism” in our contest for best anti-communist satire.

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OECD Data on Corporate Taxation Inadvertently Provides Strong Evidence for the Laffer Curve

Like most taxpayer-supported international bureaucracies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has a statist orientation.

The Paris-based OECD is particularly bad on fiscal policy and it is infamous for its efforts to prop up Europe’s welfare states by hindering tax competition.

It even has a relatively new “BEPS” project that is explicitly designed so that politicians can grab more money from corporations.

So it’s safe to say that the OECD is not a hotbed of libertarian thought on tax policy, much less a supporter of pro-growth business taxation.

Which makes it all the more significant that it just announced that supporters of free markets are correct about the Laffer Curve and corporate tax rates.

The OECD doesn’t openly acknowledge that this is the case, of course, but let’s look at key passages from a Tuesday press release.

Taxes paid by companies remain a key source of government revenues, especially in developing countries, despite the worldwide trend of falling corporate tax rates over the past two decades… In 2016, corporate tax revenues accounted for 13.3% of total tax revenues on average across the 88 jurisdictions for which data is available. This figure has increased from 12% in 2000. …OECD analysis shows that a clear trend of falling statutory corporate tax rates – the headline rate faced by companies – over the last two decades. The database shows that the average combined (central and sub-central government) statutory tax rate fell from 28.6% in 2000 to 21.4% in 2018.

So tax rates have dramatically fallen but tax revenue has actually increased. I guess many of the self-styled experts are wrong on the Laffer Curve.

By the way, whoever edits the press releases for the OECD might want to consider changing “despite” to “because of” (writers at the Washington Post, WTNH, Irish-based Independent, and Wall Street Journal need similar lessons in causality).

Let’s take a more detailed look at the data. Here’s a chart from the OECD showing how corporate rates have dropped just since 2000. Pay special attention to the orange line, which shows the rate for developed nations.

I applaud this big drop in tax rates. It’s been good for the world economy and good for workers.

And the chart only tells part of the story. The average corporate rate for OECD nations was 48 percent back in 1980.

In other words, tax rates have fallen by 50 percent in the developed world.

Yet if you look at this chart, which I prepared using the OECD’s own data, it shows that revenues actually have a slight upward trend.

I’ll close with a caveat. The Laffer Curve is very important when looking at corporate taxation, but that doesn’t mean it has an equally powerful impact when looking at other taxes.

It all depends on how sensitive various taxpayers are to changes in tax rates.

Business taxes have a big effect because companies can easily choose where to invest and how much to invest.

The Laffer Curve also is very important when looking at proposals (such as the nutty idea from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) to increase tax rates on the rich. That’s because upper-income taxpayers have a lot of control over the timing, level, and composition of business and investment income.

But changes in tax rates on middle-income earners are less likely to have a big effect because most of us get a huge chunk of our compensation from wages and salaries. Similarly, changes in sales taxes and value-added taxes are unlikely to have big effects.

Increasing those taxes is still a bad idea, of course. I’m simply making the point that not all tax increases are equally destructive (and not all tax cuts generate equal amounts of additional growth).

P.S. The International Monetary Fund also accidentally provided evidence about corporate taxes and the Laffer Curve. And there was also a little-noticed OECD study last year making the same point.

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Five Lessons from the Government Shutdown

I cared a lot about the 1995-96 shutdown and the 2013 shutdown because those were battles involving the size and scope of government.

But I don’t have a dog in the current fight over immigration and border security. That being said, I told Neil Cavuto that there are several fiscal policy lessons we can learn from the current shutdown fight.

A short TV interview just scratches the surface of an issue, so here are some additional details.

The first lesson is that much of what the government does is irrelevant to America.

I pointed out that ordinary Americans don’t notice or care that departments such as Housing and Urban Development are closed because there’s no net value generated by such bureaucracies.

And polling data supports my assertion.

The second lesson is that some parts of government should be shut down permanently.

If people don’t care or notice that a department is temporarily closed, they probably won’t care or notice if it is permanently closed.

I think that message applies to bureaucracies that are affected by the current shutdown (such as HUD and Transportation) as well as to some of the bureaucracies that are unaffected (Education, Energy, Agriculture, etc).

The third lesson is that temporary shutdowns are not a money-saving exercise.

A shutdown does not alter the amount of entitlement spending and it does not change annually appropriated spending. And since bureaucrats always get back pay for their involuntary vacations, there aren’t any savings there, either.

Some argue (see here and here) that a shutdown gives the executive branch unilateral authority to save money. I actually hope that’s true, but I have very little reason to think the Trump Administration is interested in fiscal rectitude.

The fourth lesson is that a busy and productive Congress is a dangerous Congress.

I included the brief blurb by Senator Tillis prior to my interview because I don’t want a “productive” Congress.

I’m not being nihilistic. Instead, I’m making the simple point that America’s Founders had the right idea in creating a factionalism-based system that enables gridlock.

Last but not least, the fifth lesson is that bureaucrats should have less power over economic activity.

I mentioned that there wouldn’t be any threat of disrupted air travel if all airports got to use a privatized version of TSA.

But that’s just one small example. Tim Carney’s column in the Washington Examiner is a must-read on the issue of pointless bureaucratic impediments to commerce.

…the government shutdown is another lesson… Before now, if an out of state brewery issued a new seasonal, you could simply purchase it across state lines thanks to…Form 5100.31 approvals… Of course, if you’re a particularly skeptical type, you may have a question… Why in the world should a brewer need federal approval on new beer labels? Once we ask that question, a thousand analogous questions come to mind. And in the asking, we expose the trick in so many stories about the crucial work of our expansive federal government. The trick is that the government’s work is often made necessary only by needless federal meddling in the first place. …when some reporter tries to tell you to be grateful that the federal government is opening a gate for you, ask them why the wall is there in the first place.

Amen.

This is what I was trying to get across in the interview about business decisions being stymied until some bureaucrats signs off.

Let’s wrap up today’s column with a superb Reason video by John Stossel.

P.S. No column on this topic would be complete without adding to our collection of shutdown humor (h/t: Libertarian Reddit).

You can see other examples of shutdown satire by clicking here, here, here, and here.

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The Ideal Free Trade Agreement

I’m for free trade because I want more jobs and more prosperity for the United States.

Indeed, I’ve argued we should copy that incredible economic success of Hong Kong and Singapore by unilaterally eliminating all trade barriers.

But some people complain this is akin to disarmament in a hostile world. I reject that analogy. If my neighbor shoots himself in the foot, I’ve never thought I should “level the playing field” by also shooting my foot.

That being said, we all should agree that the ideal scenario is for nations to adopt free trade agreements in order the maximize the economic benefits for all consumers and businesses.

And the good news is that nations have been building on the multilateral success of the WTO by also adopting bilateral free trade agreements.

The United States, for instance, has 14 FTAs that govern trade with 20 nations, most notably NAFTA. And while I grouse about some of the E.U.’s statist tendencies, there is genuine free trade among member nations.

But there is some bad news. Politicians and bureaucrats are slowly but surely hijacking FTAs and undermining their pro-growth impact with red tape.

It’s become so much of a problem that some free traders are questioning whether the current approach is worthwhile. For example, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains why he isn’t losing any sleep about America backing out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an example of why free trade came to have such a bad reputation with the American public. Rather than a simple agreement to lower tariffs for mutual benefit, it morphed into a massive international regulatory regime over 5,000 pages long. It was weighed down by numerous non-trade provisions aimed at appeasing non-trade special interests. …the TPP went down the road of regulatory harmonization.

He makes sure to point out that the TPP may still have been worthwhile when using cost-benefit analysis.

This is not to say that…the TPP’s tariff reductions would not have outweighed the regulatory burden.

But he argues that a much better approach is FTAs based on regulatory competition.

…there is an alternative to 5,000 pages of regulatory harmonization. …regulatory competition may be a better solution than harmonization… Regulatory competition works best by mutual recognition. For instance, Australia and New Zealand have formed a single economic market based around the Trans-Tasman Mutual Recognition Agreement, whereby…Goods legally sold in one country can be sold in the other.  This principle operates regardless of different standards, or other sale-related regulatory requirements between New Zealand and Australia. …Such an agreement would probably work very well between the U.S. and Canada – and, indeed, between the U.S. and both Australia and New Zealand in the Trans-Pacific context. …Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Chile, Singapore, and Hong Kong…A series of mutual recognition agreements with these former TPP countries would effectively form the nucleus of a Global Free Trade Association.

I would add the United Kingdom to Iain’s list (assuming it manages to extricate itself from the European Union).

Indeed, just yesterday I submitted a comment to the United States Trade Representative on a proposed FTA between the U.S. and the U.K.

Here’s some of that analysis.

A trade agreement between the United States and United Kingdom would be a chance to increase prosperity in both nations by eliminating all forms of trade barriers… It’s also an opportunity to refocus trade agreements in ways that recognize sovereignty and promote pro-market policies. More specifically, a free trade pact between the U.S. and U.K. would offer a much-needed opportunity to discard the clutter of exceptions, long phase out periods, and non-trade issues, which has characterized recent agreements, and instead go with a cleaner approach that would allow the simplicity of unfettered commerce. The ideal trade pact should seek to make trade between the U.S. and the U.K. as simple as trade between New York and Pennsylvania. That type of trade agreement doesn’t need to be cumbersome and doesn’t require a detailed thousand-page document.

I give my two cents on the benefits of mutual recognition and the value of reorienting FTAs in a pro-market direction.

…such a pact should be based on the principle of “mutual recognition,” which means that nations can have their own laws governing economic activity inside their borders, but they recognize that other nations have the same right. Most important, they also agree that there should be no restriction on the ability of consumers to buy from producers in the other nation(s). …Under such a regime, a company in the U.S. wouldn’t have to produce separate products for U.K. customers since there would be no policy restricting a consumer in, say, London, from buying a product made in, say, Cleveland. …A pact for free and open trade between the U.S. and U.K. could become a new role model for agreements between industrialized, high-income nations. If based on mutual recognition, such a free trade agreement should reverse the unfortunate trend of deals getting saddled with extraneous and/or harmful provisions.

And explain that FTAs based on mutual recognition produce an added benefit.

This approach respects national sovereignty and also would have the added benefit of encouraging policy competition between nations. If either the U.S. or the U.K. was over-regulating in a certain sector, it would mean a loss of sales to the other country, which surely would create pressure for regulatory relief. Very similar to the way tax competition puts pressure on governments today not to impose excessive tax rates.

By the way, we also shouldn’t have regulatory harmonization since that increases systemic fragility.

In other words, it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

Let’s close with a picture that powerfully captures what’s wrong with the current approach to free trade agreements. Does anybody think the new Singapore-E.U. pact is really about unfettered commerce?

Here it is. The EU-Singapore free trade agreement. pic.twitter.com/rK5iKHZcqf

— Jüri Laas (@jurilaas) October 19, 2018

Looks to me like it’s really about politicians and bureaucrats micro-managing economic activity.

My FTA would fit on one page, or a scrap of one page: “There shall be no restrictions on commerce between Country A and Country B.”

Sort of like my version of a tax system compared to the mess we have now.

P.S. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyhow, that Switzerland should be high on the list for a pro-market FTA with the United States.

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Tax Harmonization Will Accelerate the Economic Decline of Europe

There’s a very strong economic argument for Brexit which is partly based on an independent United Kingdom having more leeway to adopt pro-market policies.

This case for Brexit is also based – indeed, primarily based – on the fact that the European Union is a slowly sinking ship thanks to horrible demographics and economic weakness. I think the Brits made the right choice (assuming Prime Minister May doesn’t sabotage the process) in voting to get in a lifeboat.

By the way, the chronic stagnation in Europe is largely the fault of member nations.

For instance, I don’t blame the euro (the common currency used in 19 nations) or the European Commission (the easy-to-mock Brussels-based bureaucracy of the EU) for the bad policies adopted in nations such as France, Italy, and Greece.

That being said, the European Commission and its political supporters want the power to make things worse. Actually, they want two powers to make things worse.

1. The first bad idea, generally supported by the French and Germans, is to give Brussels direct fiscal powers. This almost certainly would mean E.U.-wide taxes imposed by Brussels, presumably accompanied by expanded levels of intra-E.U. redistribution.
2. The second bad idea, also supported by France and Germany, would be E.U.-wide rules to force national governments to adopt bad policy. This almost certainly would mean greater levels of tax harmonization, presumably accompanied by mandates to expand the welfare state.

I’ve written before about the first bad idea, so let’s focus today on the threat of Brussels-mandated tax harmonization.

The main obstacle to this bad idea is a “unanimity rule” that basically prevents further centralization of tax policy unless every member nation concurs.

This rule is what saved the E.U. from prior attempts to force member nations to adopt anti-growth policy.

…efforts to create a tax cartel have a long history, beginning even before Reagan and Thatcher lowered tax rates and triggered the modern era of tax competition. The European Commission originally wanted to require a minimum corporate tax rate of 45 percent. And as recently as 1992, there was an effort to require a minimum corporate tax rate of 30 percent.

But the bureaucrats in Brussels have not given up.

Politico reports on the latest effort to weaken fiscal sovereignty.

The European Commission…is set to unveil a communication…that will call on the bloc’s leaders to consider moving to qualified majority voting in EU taxation policy. That system would allow a tax initiative to become EU law as long as 16 out of the 28 countries agree on it. Any tax-related decision currently requires unanimity, leaving many tax proposals doomed to fail. The tax veto has undermined the bloc’s policy ambitions…the…veto…has left several tax files gathering dust on Brussels’ shelves, like the financial transactions tax, which the Commission first proposed in 2011. …The communication is set to suggest introducing qualified majority “step-by-step” for tax… The French commissioner discussed the plan over a lunch with EU ambassadors… “Ireland, Malta, Sweden and Cyprus were against it,” one diplomat that received a debrief on the meeting said. “The rest were cautious and few were for it.” France, Spain, Italy and Portugal were among the few that spoke in favor of the plan. …The Commission is determined to make its case. …The tax veto has…deprived national coffers of billions of euros, according to the draft communication… The digital and financial transaction taxes alone would have generated over €60 billion a year in revenue, the document says.

I do give the European Commission credit for honesty.

The bureaucrats are openly stating they want to get rid of the unanimity rule so that politicians in 16 member nations can force all 28 member nations to have high taxes.

You may be wondering, incidentally, why the European Commission, and the pro-tax governments like France want one-size-fits-all rules for the European Union? Why not have a let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach so that all 28 nations to make their own choices?

Once again, they are brutally honest. They unabashedly state that they want harmonized rules so they can eliminate tax competition (the left fears a “race to the bottom“).

Speaking of which, the bottom line is that Europe will decay and decline much faster if the European Commission is successful in its latest effort to kill the unanimity requirement. The last thing the E.U. needs is more taxes and higher spending.

P.S. There already are rules for harmonized VAT taxation in Europe, which predictably has enabled ever-higher tax rates.

P.P.S. The European Commission even tries to brainwash children into supporting higher taxes.

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More and More Evidence that Higher Minimum Wages Mean Fewer Jobs and Less Opportunity

How many times can you say the same thing over and over and over again?

When it comes to the minimum wage, we may never know the answer.

No matter how often new research is produced showing that low-skilled workers are hurt when politicians cut off the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, politicians persist in pushing for bad policy.

Many state already have increased minimum wages, and the “Fight for $15” crowd wants a nationwide increase.

So let’s explain, for the umpteenth time, why this is misguided.

We have lots of data and anecdotes to review, so let’s begin with some scholarly research from Europe.

Here are some results from a study in Denmark, where the minimum wage increases when workers reach age 18, at which point many of them lose their jobs (h/t: Marginal Revolution).

This paper estimates the long-run impact of youth minimum wages on youth employment by exploiting a large discontinuity in Danish minimum wage rules at age 18 and using monthly payroll records for the Danish population. …On average, the hourly wage rate jumps up by 40 percent when individuals turn eighteen years old. Employment (extensive margin) falls by 33 percent and total labor input (extensive and intensive margin) decreases by around 45 percent, leaving the aggregate wage payment nearly unchanged. Data on flows into and out of employment show that the drop in employment is driven almost entirely by job loss when individuals turn 18 years old. We estimate that the relevant elasticity for evaluating the effect on youth employment of changes in their minimum wage is about -0.8.

Here’s the most relevant chart from the study. A rather remarkable drop in employment, as you can see.

Speaking of academic research, a new report from the European Central Bank confirms that higher minimum wages have a negative impact on both employment and consumer costs.

Rises in the minimum wage determine not only the bottom part of the earnings distribution but also labour costs in general, and this could potentially cause headcount reductions. …We address this topic using a unique firm-level cross-country survey dataset compiled from a survey… Firms in eight Central and Eastern European (CEE8) countries, namely Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovenia, were asked about the particular adjustment strategies they had chosen following a specific instance of a rise in the minimum wage… The most popular adjustment channels are the increase in product prices…employment effects are realised mostly through reduced hiring, rather than direct layoffs.

This chart from the study is actually somewhat encouraging since it shows that employers bend over backwards to try to save jobs.

Now let’s look at real-world examples from the United States.

A landmark restaurant in Boston is closing, in part because the minimum wage was increased.

One of Boston’s most historic restaurants is closing its doors…Durgin-Park in Faneuil Hall…disappointed customers are trying to get in their final meals. …”This is another passing of a great institution,” said Berg. Rachelle Mazzone is Durgin-Park’s bartender and says dozens of long-time workers were told the restaurant would be closing next weekend. She was told it’s no longer profitable. …According to Ark Restaurants CEO Michael Weinstein, the restaurant wasn’t profitable anymore. He says…increase in minimum wage and health care costs…were all factors in the restaurant’s downfall. …Since 1827, the business attracted faithful diners and tourists to its Faneuil Hall location, winning several culinary awards.

An increase in the minimum wage may have been the straw to break the camel’s back for three restaurants in New York.

The rising minimum wage is getting at least part of the blame for the abrupt closure of three St. Lawrence County restaurants. …About 60 people have lost their jobs. “The minimum wage increase has been a big burden on our business. At one point we were up to 100 employees and the minimum wage has just increased every year since I opened in 2009. It’s been harder and harder to do business in New York state every year,” said Marc Morley, owner of the restaurants. …Morley said he told the restaurant managers to notify the workers. “They held all the contact information for all their individual employees,” he said. “It was an abrupt decision on our end. It wasn’t something we were planning on doing. We just got to the point where the businesses weren’t profitable and we were losing money every week.”

Here are some results from a study on the higher minimum wage in Minnesota.

Beginning in 2014, the state of Minnesota began a series of minimum wage increases. …While the effects of minimum wages changes remains a controversial topic, comparing relative outcomes in Wisconsin and Minnesota suggests that the minimum wage increases led to employment losses in Minnesota, particularly in the restaurant industry and youth demographic most affected by the changes. …Following the minimum wage increases limited service restaurant employment fell by 4% in Minnesota relative to Wisconsin. Further, youth employment fell by 9% in Minnesota following the minimum wage increases, while it increased by 10.6% in Wisconsin over the same time period. In addition, part of the increased wage costs employers faced have been passed on to consumers through higher prices. The relative price of restaurant food in the Minneapolis metro area had fallen by 2% in the four years preceding the minimum wage hikes, but it has risen by 6% in the four years since.

This chart from the study shows the impact on employment levels. The gap between the two lines is a measure of the foregone jobs in Minnesota.

As I’ve noted before, some groups are more victimized than others.

Here are excerpts from an article by Black Entertainment Television.

…economists William Even from Miami University and David Macpherson from Trinity University report that when a state, or the federal government, increases the minimum wage, Black teens are more likely to be laid off. The duo analyzed 600,000 data points… The report focused on 16-to 24-year-old males without a high school diploma and found that for each 10 percent increase in the federal or state minimum wage employment for young Black males decreased 6.5 percent. By contrast, after the same wage boost, employment for white and Hispanic males fell respectively just 2.5 percent and 1.2 percent. The real hit for Black teens occurred, however, in the 21 states that had the federal minimum wage increase in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The findings reveal that while 13,200 Black young adults lost their jobs as a direct result of the recession nearly 40 percent more, a total of 18,500, were fired because of the rise in the federal minimum wage.

Now let’s look at a video on the Seattle minimum-wage hike.

Now that we’ve dug through lots of data and research on why it would be bad news for workers if the minimum wage went up, it would be appropriate to make the obvious point that higher wages would be a desirable outcome.

And as Andy Puzder explained in the Wall Street Journal, that is why there is no substitute for economic growth.

The formula is simple: When the economy accelerates, employers compete for employees and wages increase. I experienced this during my 17 years as CEO of a national quick-service restaurant chain. The stronger the economy, the harder it was to get good employees. Conversely, when growth is weak, as it was during most of the Obama presidency, employees compete for jobs and wages stagnate. …The left’s proposed solution to wage stagnation has been for government to mandate increased wages by more than doubling the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. That causes employers to eliminate jobs and reduce hours to offset their increased costs. To increase wages without these unintended consequences, you need economic growth. …With regulatory relief, tax cuts and the increased business that comes from economic growth, employers now have the resources to bid up wages. …the competition for employees and the associated wage increases will continue—if government stays out of the way.

I basically said the same thing at the end of this interview from a few years ago.

Let’s close with some minimum wage-related humor.

Our resident philoso-raptor makes a return appearance (previous appearances here and here) to ask a question that even Hillary Clinton answered correctly.

And it’s always fun to mock the social justice warriors.

It takes a special person (h/t: Libertarian Reddit) to parade their ignorance so boldly.

Last but not least is this amusing cartoon strip that showed up in my inbox.

Reminds me of the superb crayon cartoon, which basically captures the first two-thirds of Mitchell’s Law.

P.S. This video is a great summary of why minimum wage laws should be eliminated.

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Heartwarming Stories of Civil Disobedience

I’m proud to be American in part because of the cantankerous view that my fellow citizens have about government.

A good example is the guy who knocked over a D.C. revenue camera. Or the entire state of Arizona for ignoring notices generated by revenue cameras.

And this is why I applaud jurors who deliberately disregard bad laws.

One of my favorite examples of civil disobedience comes from Connecticut, where more than 80 percent of owners flouted a state law to register so-called assault weapons.

Today, we’re going to look at additional examples of citizens giving a figurative one-finger salute to anti-gun politicians.

We’ll start with a Washington Times story about what’s happening in Boulder, Colorado, one of the most left-leaning communities in America.

Boulder’s newly enacted “assault weapons” ban is meeting with stiff resistance from its “gun-toting hippies,” staunch liberals who also happen to be devoted firearms owners. Only 342 “assault weapons,” or semiautomatic rifles, were certified by Boulder police before the Dec. 31 deadline, meaning there could be thousands of residents in the scenic university town of 107,000 in violation of the sweeping gun-control ordinance. …The ordinance, approved by the city council unanimously, banned the possession and sale of “assault weapons,” defined as semiautomatic rifles with a pistol grip, folding stock, or ability to accept a detachable magazine. Semiautomatic pistols and shotguns are also included. Current owners were given until the end of the year to choose one of two options: Get rid of their semiautomatics by moving them out of town, disabling them, or turning them over to police — or apply for a certificate with the Boulder Police Department, a process that includes a firearm inspection, background check and $20 fee. Judging by the numbers, however, most Boulder firearms owners have chosen to do none of the above… City Attorney Tom Carr has acknowledged that enforcing the ordinance will be a challenge, telling the Boulder Daily Camera that “there’s no circumstance where we go door-to-door and ask people if they’ve violated the law.”

I’m guessing there are many politicians in Boulder who would like door-to-door searches, but they wisely fear that would lead to additional civil disobedience, in this case from police officers.

Not to mention the potential for political backlash.

Now let’s shift to the heavily blue New Jersey.

Reason reports that residents of the Garden State also aren’t excited about obeying unjust laws.

on December 10…, all owners of heretofore legal “large capacity magazines” (LCMs) were required to surrender them to police, render them inoperable, modify them so they cannot hold more than 10 rounds, or sell them to authorized owners. Those who failed to do so are guilty of a fourth-degree felony… How many of New Jersey’s 1 million or so gun owners have complied with the ban by turning LCMs in to law enforcement agencies? Approximately zero… Crump, an NRA instructor and gun rights activist, “reached out to several local police departments in New Jersey” and found that “none had a single report of magazines turned over.” He also contacted the New Jersey State Police, which has not officially responded to his inquiry. But “two sources from within the State Police,” speaking on condition of anonymity, said “they both do not know of any magazines turned over to their agency and doubted that any were turned in.” I also contacted the state police, where Sgt. Jeff Flynn told me they have received “zero” LCMs.

It’s likely that the noncompliance rate isn’t actually 100 percent, but it is very heartwarming to see such widespread disobedience. Especially since magazine limits are a truly inane and useless policy.

Let’s close by noting that the don’t-tread-on-me mentality in Colorado and New Jersey exists all across the United States.

One of my favorite bits of polling data is from earlier this decade, when Americans said they would disobey gun confiscation by a three-to-one margin.

In other words, the leftist dream of disarming America won’t be easy to achieve (as explained by Reason in this must-watch video).

P.S. We need to extend the principle of civil disobedience to the fight against the administrative state.

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House Democrats Threaten Workers and Competitiveness with a Higher Corporate Income Tax Rate

There were several good features of the 2017 tax bill, including limitations on the state and local tax deduction.

But the 21 percent corporate tax rate was the unquestioned crown jewel of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. The U.S. system had become extremely anti-competitive thanks to a 35 percent rate that was far above the world average, so reform was desperately needed.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Democrats in the House of Representatives already are pushing for a big increase in the corporate rate.

Rep. John Yarmuth, the new House Budget chairman, said his chamber’s budget blueprint will aim to claw back lost revenue by boosting the corporate tax rate from its current 21 percent to as high as 28 percent… he anticipates the budget resolution will envision changes to the 2017 GOP tax overhaul, including raising the corporate tax rate above its current 21 percent. “…We’ll see how much revenue we can get out of it.” The rate was 35 percent before it was cut in the GOP tax bill.

Since Republicans control the Senate and Trump is in the White House, there’s probably no short-term risk of a higher corporate tax rate.

But such an initiative could be a major threat after the 2020 election, so let’s augment our collection of evidence showing why a higher rate would be a very bad idea.

We’ll start with some analysis from the number crunchers at the Tax Foundation.

A corporate tax rate that is more in line with our competitors reduces the incentives for firms to realize their profits in lower-tax jurisdictions and encourages companies to invest in the United States. Raising the corporate income tax rate would dismantle the most significant pro-growth provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and carry significant economic consequences. …Raising the corporate income tax rate would reduce economic growth, and lead to a smaller capital stock, lower wage growth, and reduced employment. …Raising the rate to 25 percent would reduce GDP by more than $220 billion and result in 175,700 fewer jobs.

Here’s the table showing the negative effect of a 22 percent rate and a 25 percent rate, so a bit of extrapolation will give you an idea of how the economy will suffer with a 28 percent rate.

By the way, since the adverse impact on wages is one of the main reasons to be against a higher corporate tax rate, I’ll also share this helpful flowchart from the article.

Now let’s look at some research from China, which underscores the importance of low rates if we want more innovation.

Here’s the unique set of data that created an opportunity for the research.

In November 2001, China implemented a tax collection reform on all manufacturing firms established on or after January 2002, which switched the collection of corporate income taxes from the local tax bureau to the state tax bureau. After the reform, similar firms established before or after 2002 could pay very different effective tax rates because of the differences in the management and incentives of those two types of tax bureaus…, resulting in a reduction of effective corporate income tax rates by almost 10% among newly established firms. …the policy change created exogenous variations in the effective tax rate among similar firms established before versus after 2002. We can thus apply a regression discontinuity design (RD) and use the generated variation in the effective tax rate to identify the impact of taxes on firm innovation.

And here are the findings.

Our analysis yields several interesting results. First, we show a strong and robust causal relationship between tax rate and firm innovation. Decreasing the effective tax rate by one standard deviation (0.01) increases the average number of patent application by a significant 5.7% (see Figure 2 for the graphical evidence). The reform also stimulated R&D expenditures and increased the skilled-labour ratio by 14%. Second, a lower tax rate also improves the quality of patents. The impact of tax reform on patent applications mainly comes from its effect on invention and utility patents – decreasing the effective tax rate by one standard deviation improves the probability of having an invention patent application by 4.4% and increases the number of utility patent applications by 4.7%.

Don’t forget that high personal tax rates also discourage innovation, so it’s a pick-your-poison menu.

Here’s a chart from the study, showing the difference in patents between higher-taxed firms and lower-taxed firms.

Last but not least, let’s review some of the findings from a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

We present new data on effective corporate income tax rates in 85 countries in 2004. …In a cross-section of countries, our estimates of the effective corporate tax rate have a large adverse impact on aggregate investment, FDI, and entrepreneurial activity. For example, a 10 percent increase in the effective corporate tax rate reduces aggregate investment to GDP ratio by 2 percentage points. Corporate tax rates are also negatively correlated with growth, and positively correlated with the size of the informal economy. The results are robust to the inclusion of controls for other tax rates, quality of tax administration, security of property rights, level of economic development, regulation, inflation, and openness to trade

And here’s one of the many charts and tables in the study.

The bottom line is that a higher corporate tax rate will be bad for workers for the simple reason that less investment means lower productivity and lower productivity means lower wages.

P.S. It’s also likely that House Democrats will try to increase the top personal tax rate, though hopefully they’re not so crazy as to push for Ocasio-Cortez’s 70 percent rate.

P.P.S. it’s quite possible that an increase in the corporate tax rate would reduce revenues, especially in the long run.

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The Impressive Rise (and Potential Fall) of South Korea

When I give speeches on the importance of public policy, I frequently share data showing that pro-market nations are relatively prosperous when compared to countries with statist policies.

One of the most dramatic examples is South Korean prosperity versus North Korean deprivation.

It’s not that South Korea is perfect. After all, it only ranks #35 according to Economic Freedom of the World.

But that’s enough economic liberty to be in the “most free” category. And this helps to explain why South Korean living standards have climbed dramatically compared to the economic hellhole of North Korea (and you see something similar if you compare Venezuela and South Korea).

I’m definitely not the only person to notice the difference between the two Koreas. Here are some excerpts from one of Richard Rahn’s columns in 2017.

In 1960, South Korea and North Korea were similar in their poverty. Now, 50-plus years later, South Korea has a per-capita income more than 20 times that of North Korea, at approximately $38,000 per year, which is higher than that of Spain or Italy. South Koreans have gone from a per-capita income in 1970 that was about 10 percent of the average American to almost 70 percent today. …Koreans in both the North and South come from the same genetic stock, speak the same language, and occupy adjoining pieces of land with much of the same topography and limited natural resources. North Korea is the ultimate consequence of socialism, which always contains the seeds of its own destruction. Socialism goes against human nature, requiring its government to become increasingly authoritarian — North Korea being Exhibit A.

But Richard also warned that South Korea can’t rest on its laurels.

While economic growth per year averaged more than 9 percent from 1963 to 1990, it has now slowed down and last year was only 2.8 percent…a sharp drop from earlier decades. There is too much unneeded and counterproductive regulation, including the lack of ease of creating new businesses, barriers to imports and inward foreign investment. By any measure, South Korea has been a great success, but probably not as much as it could have been or can be if it followed more of a classic free trade and more limited-government model as practiced by Hong Kong and others. The country is increasingly exhibiting the disease of most other rich, developed democracies by allowing itself to be slowly seduced into the promise of more government services and attendant regulation, rather than the tougher and more competitive policies that created the wealth. Will South Korea avoid the stagnation of Japan and much of Europe? The jury is still out.

The jury may still be out, but there is growing evidence that South Korea is heading in the wrong direction because the nation’s relatively new President in increasing the burden of government.

Here are some passages from a report in the Japan Times.

Moon Jae-in began his second full year as South Korea’s president with a reminder of what didn’t work in the first — namely his economic policies. …The self-styled “jobs president” has seen his once sky-high poll numbers tumble… Moon, a progressive, was swept into office in 2017 promising a reversal from the conglomerate-focused economic agenda of ousted President Park Geun-hye. But his plan to raise the minimum wage 11 percent disappointed… More than three-quarters of the 30 experts surveyed by Bloomberg News last month predicted that employment growth would slow this year, in part because of the wage hike. …In a speech at his news conference Thursday, Moon…pledged to improve the safety net…and fix what he described as “the worst forms of polarized wealth and economic inequality in the world.” …More than half of South Koreans surveyed in another Gallup poll last month said that the administration needed “to focus on economic growth, rather than income distribution.”

By the way, the article doesn’t even mention that South Korea faces a major demographic challenge.

It has a catastrophically low fertility rate, which means that the tax-and-transfer welfare state will become increasingly unaffordable as the ratio of workers to recipients shifts in the wrong direction.

Entitlement reform is the sensible answer to this problem (see Hong Kong, for example).

But that’s obviously not happening under President Moon. Indeed, he wants to make matters worse by expanding the welfare state.

Some people in South Korea realize that demographics are a problem for their nation.

The U.K.-based Express looks at their attempted solution.

Seoul’s Dongguk and Kyung Hee universities say the courses on dating, sex, love and relationships target a generation which is shunning traditional family lives. …as part of the course, students have to date three classmates for a month each. …The course has expanded to Kyong Hee university, which offers “Love and Marriage” classes and Inha university in Incheon, a specialist engineering college, where students can now sign up to lessons on prioritising success and love. In 2016 the number of marriages hit its lowest since 1977, according to data from the government agency Statistics Korea. …The crude marriage rate – the annual number of marriages per 1,000 people – was 5.5 last year, compared with 295.1 when statistics began in 1970. Seoul has spent about £50 billion trying to boost the birth rate.

I’m skeptical of this approach, regardless of how much money the government spends.

Policy makers should focus instead on things they can control, such as fiscal policy and regulatory policy.

And this is why South Korea’s lurch to the left is so disappointing. Politicians are making things worse rather than better.

Even the New York Times is reporting that Moon’s statist agenda isn’t working.

Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea has raised taxes and the minimum wage in the name of economic growth. So far, it hasn’t worked out as planned. Growth has slowed, unemployment has risen and small-business owners…are complaining. …With his progressive policies, President Moon is trying to tackle some of the same economic problems that plague the United States and much of the developed world. They include a widening wealth gap, slower growth and stagnant wages. …South Korea’s troubles suggest the limits of the state in solving economic problems, especially without addressing the underlying structural issues. …After his election in May 2017, Mr. Moon undertook a sharp shift in economic policy. He supported higher wages, tighter restrictions on working hours and greater welfare spending, funded by tax increases on companies and high-income earners. …Mr. Moon has paid a steep political price for his agenda. His approval rating has plummeted from 84 percent in mid-2017 to 45 percent in the most recent Gallup poll. …The 2019 budget represents the sharpest increase in spending in a decade… The minimum wage has also gone up again for 2019, by 11 percent.

More taxes, more spending, more regulation, and more intervention. Who does Moon think he is, Barack Obama or Richard Nixon?

On a serious note, it surely says something that even the New York Times is forced to acknowledge that statist policies backfire.

Let’s close by looking at how South Korea’s economic freedom score has evolved over time. As you can see, there was a lot of economic liberalization between 1975-2005. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that economic liberty has declined since the mid-2000s.

The drop is modest, at least in absolute terms. But it’s also important (as I explained when looking at Italy) to look at relative competitiveness.

South Korea’s current score of 7.53 isn’t that much lower than its 7.67 score in 2006. But that slight drop, along with pro-reforms steps that other nations have taken, means that South Korea is now ranked #35 instead of #20.

And the current scores are based on policy in 2016, before Moon moved South Korea in the direction of more statism. This doesn’t bode well.

P.S. I’m not expecting South Korea to become another Hong Kong or Singapore, but it should at least seek incremental progress rather than incremental deterioration. Taiwan is a good example of that approach.

July 29, 2021 Addendum: Here’s a chart showing that both South Korea and Taiwan have easily out-performed the world average in recent decades.

The key question, of course, is whether they will follow the right policies and get continued good performance in the future.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Fiscal Plan Will Lead to Giant Tax Hikes on Middle-Class and Lower-Income Americans

Bernie Sanders is yesterday’s news.

Yes, he’s still lovable ol’ Crazy Bernie, but he’s now being overshadowed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another out-of-the-closet socialist who somehow thinks America should be more like Greece or Venezuela.

Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute opines in National Review about AOC’s proposed tax hike on the rich. He starts with a very appropriate economic observation.

A 70 percent tax bracket would raise very little (if any) revenue, while damaging the economy and sending income and jobs overseas.

He then points out that we should look at both sides of the fiscal ledger.

And the spending side of the left’s ledger is very crowded and very heavy.

…when assessing the needed tax revenues, a green-energy initiative costing $7–$10 trillion over the decade should be examined in the context of $42 trillion in additional Democratic-socialist proposals that include single-payer health care ($32 trillion), a federal jobs guarantee ($6.8 trillion), student-loan forgiveness ($1.4 trillion), free public college ($800 billion), infrastructure ($1 trillion), family leave ($270 billion), and Social Security expansion ($188 billion). …These spending promises are so stratospheric as to be incomprehensible — except to the far Left, which clings to the myth that simply taxing millionaires can finance a level of socialism that would make the Swedes start a tea-party movement.

Here’s the key part of Brian’s column.

He points out that there’s no way to finance the agenda of Democratic Socialists with class-warfare taxes. Even if the AOC tax plan is dramatically expanded.

…a 100 percent tax rate on all income over $1 million…would raise 3.8 percent of GDP — not even enough to balance the current budget, much less finance a Green New Deal. And even that figure implausibly assumes that people continue working and investing. Slightly more realistically, doubling the top 35 percent and 37 percent tax brackets, to 70 percent and 74 percent for singles earning more than $200,000 and couples earning at least $400,000, would raise roughly 1.6 percent of GDP. That figure also ignores all revenues lost to the economic effects of 85 percent marginal tax rates (when including state and payroll taxes) as well as tax avoidance and evasion. …limiting the 70 percent tax bracket to incomes over $10 million…would raise only 0.25 percent of GDP — about $50 billion annually. …$50 billion is surely too high of an estimate, because the kind of people with incomes over $10 million also have teams of accountants and tax lawyers finding every conceivable tax loophole and overseas income shift.

Everything we know about the real-world impact of tax policy tells us that these soak-the-rich taxes won’t raise much – if any – revenue for the simple reason that upper-income taxpayers will alter the timing, level, and composition of their income.

But, as Brian noted, these taxes wouldn’t come close to financing the leftist wish list even if one makes absurd assumptions that behavior doesn’t change and the economy is unaffected.

So how do European nations finance their large welfare states?

Europe finances its generous welfare states through steep value-added taxes that hit the entire population. …Increasing federal spending by 21 percent of GDP to fund Democratic socialism — even after slashing defense — would require either a 55 percent payroll tax increase, or 115 percent value-added tax, according to CBO data. Acknowledging this brutal middle-class burden would immediately end any public flirtation with “free-lunch socialism.”

This is the most important takeaway from the column.

And it’s something that I’ve noted as well. On more than one occasion.

If you want European-type handouts, you better be prepared to cough up a lot of money.

• Onerous value-added taxes.
• Punitive payroll taxes.
• And income taxes that impose high rates on modest incomes.

Simply stated, there is no way to finance a European-sized welfare state without pillaging middle-class and lower-income taxpayers.

Which helps to explain why European living standards are significantly below American levels.

By the way, there one final point from Brian’s column that is worth sharing.

He explains that high tax rates in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s didn’t generate much revenue. Even from the rich.

A common liberal retort is that the economy survived 91 percent income-tax rates under President Eisenhower and 70 percent tax rates through the 1970s. That does not mean those policies raised much revenue. Tax exclusions and high income thresholds shielded nearly everyone from these tax rates — to the degree that the richest 1 percent of earners paid lower effective income-tax rates in the 1950s than today. In 1960, only eight taxpayers paid the 91 percent rate. Overall, today’s 8.2 percent of GDP in federal income-tax revenues exceeds that of the 1950s (7.2 percent), 1960s (7.6 percent), and 1970s (7.9 percent). Those earlier decades were not a tax-the-rich utopia.

Amen.

I made similar points back in 2017.

The bottom line is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s economic agenda cannot be justified when looking at economic data, fiscal data, and historical data.

But we can say with great confidence that ordinary people ultimately will pay the heaviest price if her proposals get enacted since her class-warfare tax hikes will be a precursor for huge tax increases on the rest of us.

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The Chilean Economic Miracle: Big Benefits for the Poor, Part III

Today is my last day in Chile, so today’s column will build upon what I wrote last week.

I have three charts that illustrate how Chile’s pro-market reforms have been great news – especially for poor people (or, to be more accurate, for Chileans who used to be poor).

We’ll start with this chart from the most recent issue of Economía y Sociedad, which shows that there’s more mobility in Chile than any other OECD nation.

Honest folks on the left should view this as unambiguously positive.

Similarly, this Gini data (measuring the degree of inequality) should be slam-dunk evidence of progress for all left-of-center people.

For what it’s worth, I don’t care about the Gini coefficient. What matters to me is economic growth so that everyone can get richer.

If rich people happen to get richer faster than poor people (like in China), that’s fine.

And if poor people happen to get richer faster than rich people (like in Chile), that’s fine as well.

What irks me is that folks who fixate on inequality often support policies that retard growth. In other words, they’re so worried about rich people getting richer that they advocate for bigger government, which makes it harder for poor people to become richer.

Economic growth, by contrast, truly is the rising tide that lifts all boats.

Which is why this final chart (based on the Maddison database) is so powerful. It shows 1975-2016 income trends for Chile (red) and other major Latin American economies. As you can see, Chile started near the bottom and is now the region’s richest nation.

Wow, Chile didn’t just converge. It surpassed.

It’s also worth noting how nations such as Argentina, Venezuela, and Cuba have enjoyed very little income growth over the past 40 years.

The bottom line is that those nations are evidence of the costly impact of statism, while Chile is an amazing example of how capitalism generates widely shared prosperity.

P.S. I’m not claiming Chile is a perfect role model. It is #15 in Economic Freedom of the World, so there is considerable room for improvement. But I am arguing it is a successful example of how better policy is great news for all segments of society.

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The World Trade Organization Advances American Prosperity

Time for the final installment in my four-part video series on trade-related topics.

• Part I focused on the irrelevance of trade balances.
• Part II looked at specialization and comparative advantage.
• Part III explained trade and creative destruction.

Here’s Part IV, which looks at the very positive role of the World Trade Organization.

My basic argument is that it is a good idea to get other nations to reduce trade barriers, but tit-for-tat protectionism is not the right approach.

As I explained when writing about Chinese mercantilism, the U.S. would have far more success by using the WTO.

Let’s look at what experts have said.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Greg Rushford explained why the WTO is good for the United States.

President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall successfully pressed America’s war allies to create the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade more than 70 years ago. Leaders across the globe, mindful of how economic nationalism in the 1930s had contributed to the devastation of World War II, wanted to open the world up again. The agreement focused on slashing of tariffs and other barriers to trade—bringing unprecedented prosperity to hundreds of millions of people. The GATT, which evolved into the World Trade Organization in 1995, became the world’s most successful international economic experiment. …Despite Mr. Trump’s assertion that the WTO has been “a disaster” for the U.S., Washington has won 85% of the 117 WTO cases it has brought against foreign trading partners. Japan complained in 2003 that WTO jurists had stretched the law by determining that Japanese health officials used phony science to ban American apples. The real U.S. gripe is that foreign governments have won most of the 145 cases that they have brought against American protectionist policies. …Both political parties would be well-advised to consider the wisdom of Truman and Marshall. They understood that true national-security imperatives meant resisting protectionism.

And here’s some more background information from a column in the WSJ by James Bacchus, who served as both a Member of Congress and as a Chief Judge at the WTO.

…let’s say Mr. Trump managed to get his way and pull the U.S. out of the WTO. The consequences for the world and U.S. economies would be immense. Among them: diminished trade growth, costly market and supply-chain disruptions, and the destruction of jobs and profits, especially in import- and export-dependent U.S. industries. The resulting trade barriers would compel some American companies either to downsize or move offshore. The global economic spiral set in motion by Mr. Trump’s reckless trade actions on steel, aluminum, Canada, Mexico, China, and Europe would accelerate. …WTO membership provides goods and services produced in the U.S. with protection against discrimination in foreign markets. Nondiscrimination rules are the heart of the WTO trading system, which currently applies in 164 countries and to 98% of all global commerce. …Instead of waging war on the WTO, the U.S. should help modernize it by making it more effective in addressing digital trade, services, subsidies, sustainability and intellectual property. Internationally agreed rules for international trade—and a process for resolving disputes about those rules—are an indispensable pillar of national prosperity.

I agree with everything in both columns.

And I’ll add one very simple – and hopefully very powerful – point.

Here’s a chart from the WTO showing that the United States is one of the world’s most pro-trade nations, with average tariffs of only 3.48 percent. Not as good as Hong Kong (0.0 percent) or Singapore (0.1 percent), but definitely good compared to most other nations.

In other words, it would be good if we could convince other nations to lower their trade barriers to our level.

Yet that’s exactly what’s been happening thanks to the WTO (and GATT, the predecessor pact). Here’s a chart prepared by the Confederation of British Industry, which shows how trade barriers have been continuously dropping. And dropping most rapidly in other nations, which is something Trump should be happy about.

The bottom line is that the WTO unambiguously advances U.S. interests, as I noted in the conclusion of the video.

But it actually advances the interests of all nations by gradually reducing global barriers to trade.

Is it as good as unilateral free trade? No, but it is a big win-win for America and the rest of the world.

Which is why, despite my usual disdain for international bureaucracies, I’m a big fan of the WTO.

Addendum: The original one-minute video no longer exists and has been replaced by a longer video that covers the same material in greater detail.

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Trudeau’s Class-Warfare Tax Hike Produces Less Revenue

I wrote yesterday about a handful of strange legal developments in Canada.

In a display of balance, however, I noted in my conclusion that Canada in recent decades has been “very sensible” with regard to economic issues (spending restraint, welfare reform, corporate tax reform, bank bailouts, regulatory budgeting, the tax treatment of saving, school choice, and privatization of air traffic control).

But “very sensible” is not the same as “totally sensible.” Especially not if you count recent years.

The nation’s current top politician, Justin Trudeau (a.k.a., Prime Minister Zoolander), increased the top tax rate from 29 percent to 33 percent after taking office in late 2015.

It appears, though, that he wasn’t aware of a concept known as the Laffer Curve (or, like some folks on the left, maybe he simply didn’t care).

In the real world, however, it turns out that increasing tax rates is not the same as increasing tax revenue.

Here are some excerpts from a story in the Globe and Mail.

The Liberal government’s tax on Canada’s top 1 per cent failed to produce the promised billions in new revenue in its first year, as high-income earners actually paid $4.6-billion less in federal taxes. …The latest available tax records show that revenue from Canadians earning about $140,000 or more – which had previously been the fourth and highest tax bracket – dropped by $4.6-billion in 2016, the first full year that the Liberal tax changes were in effect. Further, 30,340 fewer Canadians reported incomes in that range for 2016 compared with the year before. …The new top bracket with a 33-per-cent tax rate was predicted to raise about $3-billion a year in new revenue… Critics of the Liberal plan say the CRA’s 2016 numbers justify their concern that a new top tax bracket hurts Canadian efforts to boost competitiveness and attract top talent.

It’s quite possible, as noted in the article, that some of the foregone revenue might be the result of one-time changes, such as upper-income taxpayers shifting income from 2016 to 2015 (rich people do have considerable control over the timing, level, and composition of their income).

A report from Global News reviews a report about the degree to which revenues dropped for transitory reasons.

The Liberal government’s 2016 tax hike on Canada’s top one per cent not only failed to yield the promised billions, but resulted in a net revenue loss for government coffers… After adjusting for economic changes and one-time factors, the paper estimates, based on 2016 tax data, that the Liberals’ new tax bracket for top earners creates $1.2 billion in new revenue for the federal government but a $1.3 billion loss for provincial governments. …Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office, however, has maintained that the revenue drop for 2016 was a one-off event. …But an analysis of the data that adjusts for the impact of the dividends maneuver and economic factors still shows that the tax hike would have fallen far short of the hype… Studies have shown that top earners are more likely than lower-income taxpayers to react to tax increases by reducing their taxable income. This may be because the wealthy have access to more sophisticated tax advice, are more easily able to shift assets to lower-tax jurisdictions or can afford to simply decide to work less given that they get to keep less of their money.

Much of the data in this story came from an analysis by the C.D. Howe Institute.

Here’s the key chart from that study, which disentangles the one-off changes and permanent changes caused by the higher tax rate.

The bottom line is that the experts at the C.D. Howe Institute believe that the central government eventually will collect more revenue from the higher tax rate, but:

1. The revenue will be less than projected by static revenue estimates because of permanently lower levels of taxable income.
2. The added revenue for the central government is more than offset by lower tax receipts for subnational levels of government.

In other words, Trudeau’s tax hike was a big mistake. The only tangible results are that the private sector is now smaller and the country is less competitive.

For what it’s worth, I view the lack of additional tax revenue as a silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. Maybe, just maybe, this will put a damper on some of Trudeau’s irresponsible plans for more spending.

P.S. For those interested in Canadian fiscal policy, I shared some research last year about the implications of provincial changes in tax policy.

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Great Moments in Canadian Law

When I think of over-bearing governments with myopic enforcement of silly rules, I obviously think of the United States, especially the IRS, EEOC, FDA, and EPA.

And I also think of Germany, Japan, and other straight-laced societies.

But I don’t think of Canada. After all, that’s the home of Dudley Do-Right. Canadians are too nice to do dumb things!

However, I shouldn’t be basing my views on a cartoon from my childhood. It seems that Canadians are quite capable of bizarre behavior. At least when you look at their legal system.

• Levying a $465 fine on a motorist with a slight tear in his driver’s license.
• Grudgingly allowing two girls to operate a lemonade stand.
• Awarding extra money to a healthcare worker because alcoholism is a disability.
• Ruling that it is illegal for two kids to sell worms without a license.
• Fining a mother for giving her kids non-state-approved lunches.
• Suspending a student for rescuing a classmate from a bully.
• Telling an Italian restaurant that Italian words are against the law.

Let’s review three additional examples.

I’ve written about some of the mistakes that American states (California and Colorado, for instance) have made when legalizing marijuana. Well, there are similar mistakes in Canada according to the Washington Post.

When the government launched Canada’s official recreational-pot market on Oct. 17, it was banking on the idea that many users would prefer to buy legally and that the black market would quickly begin to fade. …things aren’t going as expected. …a month after legalization, more than a third of Canadian cannabis users said they were still buying from their regular dealers and hadn’t even tried the legal system. Five illegal sellers in Quebec told The Washington Post their sales are slightly up.

It turns out that the legal system is a mess of harsh regulation.

In 2015, when the government first committed to legalization, many of them planned to apply to open private shops. “All of us thought, ‘Okay . . . I’m going to be able to come out of the shadows and I’m going to be able to pay taxes,’ ” David said. “As time went on, it became clear that’s not what they were after.” In Quebec and several other Canadian provinces, all cannabis stores are government-run, leaving no path to legality… said Lewis Koski, former director of the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division and now a consultant on legalization. “I can’t think of a state here in the U.S. that has a government-control model similar to . . . Canada’s.” Even in provinces that do allow private shops or dispensaries, including Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, small businesses face high barriers. It costs almost $5,000 just to apply for a license, and if approved, $23,000 each year thereafter in regulatory fees, with provinces often adding their own charges.

Let’s now look at a government-enforced Canadian cartel.

The maple syrup farmers of Québec have been saddled with compulsory membership to the Federation of Québec Maple Syrup Producers (FPAQ, according to the native French abbreviation) since 1990. The Federation holds monopoly rights over all maple syrup produced in the province, controlling wholesale distribution and prices. Anyone who dares to sell more than five litres of their boiled tree sap on their own farm or to local grocery stores faces a prison sentence and a fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars. …Angele Grenier and her husband, decades-long syrup farmers, have been smuggling their contraband syrup to the neighboring province of New Brunswick. In the dark of the night, they load barrels onto trucks and sneak across the province border to market freedom. For this terrible black market act of choosing their own customers and prices, Angele is one of Canada’s most wanted women. She has appealed the charges brought against her by the FPAQ, and her case is being taken up by the Supreme Court.

Maybe Canadian syrup smugglers can learn lessons from Norwegian butter smugglers?

Last but not least, the Toronto Star reports that Canadian law enforcement is capable of government thuggery.

At about 5 p.m. on May 13, 2009, Kosoian stepped on the down escalator at a subway station in Laval. She was heading to her history class at a university in downtown Montreal. Kosoian had used that same escalator almost every day for four years. She knew that at the front of the escalator, as well as at a spot halfway down, were yellow pictograms that said, “Caution … hold handrail.” She deemed the pictogram nothing more than a warning or recommendation. Besides, the H1N1 virus was making the rounds, and Kosoian considered the handrail a cesspool of microbes. …A police officer…stopped in front of Kosoian on the step below when the escalator had taken her about halfway down. The officer, Fabio Camacho, …ordered her to hold the handrail. Kosoian says she responded: “It’s my right to hold the handrail or not to hold it.” …when Kosoian reached the bottom of the escalator, Camacho and his partner, the officer who initially walked past Kosoian, grabbed her by the arms and took her to a nearby locked room that also contained a jail cell. …Camacho and his partner cuffed Kosoian’s hands behind her back and sat her in a chair. He searched her bag, found her driver’s licence and began writing her two tickets: a $100 fine for not holding the handrail, and a $320 fine for obstructing the work of a police officer.

It’s quite possible that Kosoian was being obnoxious and baiting the cops, but none of that changes the fact that not holding a handrail shouldn’t be a criminal offense.

Do cops in Canada bust into people’s houses to see if mattress tags are still attached (though perhaps only the U.S. is dumb enough to have such a rule)?

Interestingly, this episode from 2009 is now going to the Canadian Supreme Court.

The Laval police force and the transit agency…pressed for the fines to be paid, and Kosoian’s refusal triggered a municipal court hearing in May 2011. In March 2012, Judge Florent Bisson acquitted Kosoian of the tickets… Kosoian…launched a lawsuit against Camacho, the STM and the City of Laval. In August 2015, the Quebec Court dismissed it with a legal tongue lashing. …She appealed and, on Dec. 5, 2017, the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled against her in a 2-1 decision. …Kosoian and her lawyer again appealed, this time to the Supreme Court. …the Supreme Court has only granted about 10 per cent of the 500 or so requests for appeals it receives each year. So Thomas Slade, a lawyer who is not involved in the case, says he was initially surprised when the court agreed to hear Kosoian.

I’m not overflowing with sympathy for Ms. Kosoian, but there’s not much doubt that getting rid of stupid laws is the best way of avoiding this type of mess.

I’ll close with two observations. First, Americans can’t throw stones at our Canadian friends since we live in a glass house.

Second, Canada obviously needs to change some of its silly laws, but I don’t want this to be interpreted as an indictment of the entire country (notwithstanding Prime Minister Zoolander).

In recent decades, Canada has dealt with several issues (spending restraint, welfare reform, corporate tax reform, bank bailouts, regulatory budgeting, the tax treatment of saving, school choice, and privatization of air traffic control) in a very sensible fashion.

P.S. Though a Canadian politician is eligible for the hypocrite-of-the-century award.

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The Adverse Consequences of a 70-Percent Top Tax Rate on Households

She’s not quite as bad as Matt Yglesias, who wants a top tax rate of 90 percent (a rate that Crazy Bernie also likes), but Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not bashful about wanting to use the coercive power of government to take much larger shares of what others have earned.

And she doesn’t want to take “just” half, which would be bad enough. She wants to go ever further, endorsing a top tax rate on household income of 70 percent.

Those of you with a lot of gray hair may recall that’s the type of punitive tax regime we had in the 1970s (does anybody want a return to the economic misery we suffered during the Nixon and Carter years?).

So it’s very disturbing to think we may get an encore performance.

Here are some excerpts from a Politico report.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is floating an income tax rate as high as 60 to 70 percent on the highest-earning Americans… Ocasio-Cortez said a dramatic increase in taxes could support her “Green New Deal” goal of eliminating the use of fossil fuels within 12 years… “There’s an element where yeah, people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes.” …When Cooper pointed out such a tax plan would be a “radical” move, Ocasio-Cortez embraced the label… “I think that it only has ever been radicals that have changed this country,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Yeah, if that’s what radical means, call me a radical.”

There are many arguments to make against this type of class-warfare policy, but I’ll focus on two main points.

First, this approach isn’t practical, even from a left-wing perspective. Simply stated, upper-income taxpayers have considerable control over the timing, level, and composition of their income, and they can take very simple (and completely legal) steps to protect their money as tax rates increase.

This is one of the reasons why higher tax rates don’t translate into higher tax revenue.

If you don’t believe me, check out the IRS data on what happened in the 1980s when Reagan dropped the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent. Revenues from those making more than $200,000 quintupled.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wants to run that experiment in reverse. That won’t end well (assuming, of course, that her goal is collecting more revenue, which may not be the case).

Second, higher tax rates on the rich will have negative consequences for the rest of us. This is because there is a lot of very rigorous research that tell us:

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

And this is just a partial list.

And I didn’t even include the potential costs of out-migration, which doubtlessly would be significant since Ms. Ocasio-Cortez would impose the developed world’s most punitive tax regime on the United States.

I’ll close by recycling this video on the harmful impact of punitive tax rates.

P.S. Today’s column focused on the adverse economic impact of a confiscatory tax rate, but let’s not forget the other side of the fiscal equation. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wants to finance a “green new deal,” which presumably means a return to Solyndra-style scandals.

P.P.S. There is some encouraging polling data on class-warfare taxation.

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Chile’s Pro-Market Reforms Generate Big Benefits for the Less Fortunate, Part II

I’m currently in Chile, enjoying the warm sun and doing research on the nation’s impressive economic performance.

I met yesterday with Jose Pinera, the former minister who created Chile’s incredibly successful system of personal retirement accounts (he’s also one of the people Gary Johnson should have mentioned when he was asked to identify an admirable foreign leader).

Back in 2013, I shared some of Jose’s data showing how the economy took off after Chile enacted pro-market reforms.

I was especially impressed by the stunning reduction in the poverty rate, which had dropped from 50 percent to 11 percent (it’s now down to 7.8 percent).

In other words, capitalism has been great news for poor Chileans. Simply stated, when given more freedom and opportunity, most of them escape poverty.

Interestingly, Reuters reports that even the IMF recognizes Chile’s superior performance.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) hailed Chile’s strengthening economy in a report published on Friday while encouraging President Sebastian Pinera to push forward with promised structural reforms. In a statement following its annual consultation with Chile, the IMF praised Pinera’s proposed reform drive… Conservative billionaire Pinera took office in March with a strong mandate to make changes to the country’s pension system and labor laws and simplify the tax code. …The bank praised his early efforts, which it said were aimed at “re-invigorating investment and economic growth.”

Hmmm…, makes me wonder if the IMF (given its dismal track record) actually understands why Chile has become so prosperous.

Though the World Bank has praised the country’s pro-market reforms, so international bureaucracies sometimes stumble on the right answer.

But let’s not get distracted. Today, I want to share further evidence about how pro-market reforms produce big benefits for the less fortunate.

Here’s a chart from an article in the latest edition Economia y Sociedad. The article is in Spanish, but a translation of the relevant passage tells us that, “in Chile, the income of the poorest 20% of the population has risen at a rate (8.2% per year) that is 50% higher than that to which the income of the richest 20% has risen ( 5.3% per year).”

In other words, a rising tide lifts all boats (just as in the U.S.), but the bottom quintile is enjoying the biggest increases.

Sounds like great news. And it is great news. But some people put on blinders.

My left-leaning friends loudly assure me that they are motivated by a desire to help poor people. Yet if that’s true, why aren’t they falling over themselves to praise Chile? Why are they instead susceptible to waxing rhapsodic about the hellhole of Venezuela or bending over backwards to defend Cuba’s miserable regime?

And why do some anti-capitalist economists engage in absurd examples of cherry picking in failed efforts to discredit Chile’s accomplishments?

The bottom line is that Chile became the Latin Tiger thanks to economic liberty. That’s great news for the country, but especially good for the less fortunate.

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Government Shutdowns and Financial Markets

I’ve previously explained why I don’t have a dog in the current shutdown fight in Washington.

Simply stated, Trump isn’t fighting to make government smaller. Instead he wants more spending for a wall and isn’t even proposing some offsetting reductions to keep the overall burden of government from expanding.

That being said, I get annoyed when defenders of the status quo act as if the economy is in danger simply because a small handful of non-essential bureaucracies and departments are temporarily shuttered.

In addition to the interview with Fox Business, I also pontificated on the same topic for Cheddar, which is a new network covering financial and economic issues.

So why are TV networks bothering to cover this non-story?

Because some people think the partial shutdown does matter. Here are some excerpts from a report by USA Today.

Economists are starting to weigh the potential damage of the ongoing federal government shutdown…if the impasse drags into late January or beyond, it could take a noticeable toll by dampening federal workers’ productivity, temporarily halting their paychecks… The biggest damage could be inflicted on consumer and business confidence that’s already been dented by the recent stock market selloff. …Economist Jesse Edgerton of JPMorgan Chase predicts it could trim growth by a half a percentage point. That’s about how much the 16-day partial government shutdown reduced growth in late 2013.

Sigh.

The people who made up numbers about the alleged harm of the 2013 shutdown are basically the same people who said the sequester would hurt growth. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.

You use a crummy Keynesian model (which presupposes that government spending is good for the economy) and you get predictably nonsensical Keynesian results.

Writing for the American Spectator, Christopher Buskirk has a more sober perspective.

The DC media complex is not happy with the partial shutdown of the federal government. The government shutdown drags into the New Year, they tell us! …Yet for all of the breathless commentary from Beltway media, the reality is that the federal government can’t even shut itself down properly. Only about 25 percent of the federal government is affected. The military is fully funded and on duty, as are Social Security and Medicare. The US Postal Services continues delivering unwanted flyers and coupons, the TSA is fully funded and patting people down, and the Veterans Administration is still providing substandard care to our veterans. …when I turn on the faucet, water still comes out. When I drive to the store, the street lights are still on. In fact, I passed a police officer on the way to get a coffee this morning, so our neighborhood remains safe. So what am I missing? Not much it turns out. And neither is almost anyone else. …what we learned from the shutdown is that…the federal government is mostly non-essential.

Amen.

This is one of the reasons I don’t get agitated about shutdown (at least the ones that occur because someone is fighting for good policy). If we kept parts of the government shut down for a long period of time, maybe people would notice that nothing bad happened and then conclude that it would be a good idea to never let those departments and agencies reopen.

In any event, the focus of fiscal policy should be on shrinking the federal government, not merely a temporary partial shutdown (which doesn’t even save money since bureaucrats eventually get full pay for the days they weren’t in their offices).

Let’s close with a bit of humor I received in my inbox.

You can see other examples of shutdown satire by clicking here.

P.S. As I noted in my interview, the current shakiness of financial markets should be blamed on Trump’s protectionism and the hangover from Keynesian monetary policy.

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The Greatest-Ever Act of Tax Avoidance?

I despise the death tax. It should be abolished.

My main objection is that it is immoral. If a person earns money, pays tax on the money, and then responsibly saves and invests the money (which generally requires paying another layer of tax), it is reprehensible that politicians want to tax the money yet again simply because the person dies.

But I’m also an economist, so I don’t like the tax because it is the most pernicious form of double taxation. The levy not only drains capital from the private sector, it also discourages the building and creating of wealth in the first place, while also lining the pockets of accountants and tax lawyers.

None of that is good for those of us who will never have enough money to get hit by the tax.

The only silver lining to this dark cloud is that we get very interesting stories of what people are willing to do to escape this unfair and destructive levy.

Jeanne Calment’s apparent longevity turned her into a global celebrity before she died at the age of 122 years and 164 days in 1997. However, that age is being challenged… Yuri Deigin, a genealogist, claims that Mrs Calment actually died in 1934 and that her daughter, Yvonne, usurped her identity… The genealogist said that Mrs Calment, born in 1875, and Fernand, her husband, were the joint owners of a department store in Arles, in Provence. If Mrs Calment’s death had been registered, Mr Calment would have had to pay inheritance tax of up to 38 per cent on his wife’s half of the business. …Mr Deigin said that Mr Calment avoided the bill by telling officials that it was his daughter who had died. The daughter then passed herself off as her mother for the rest of her life.

Not everyone accepts Mr. Deigin’s analysis and it’s possible that will be genetic testing of Mrs. Calment’s remains.

For what it’s worth, I’m guessing the story is accurate. We already have lots of evidence that people will take extraordinary steps to protect family funds from this additional layer of tax.

• Straight men will marry each other.
• Gay men will adopt their lovers.
• People will live longer to escape the tax.
• People will die earlier to escape the tax.

Sadly, I don’t have to worry about the death tax. But if I did, I would do everything in my power to make sure my kids got my money rather than the despicable people in Washington.

So I admire Mrs. Calment. Yes, she broke the law, but that doesn’t bother me when the law is unjust.

P.S. I’ll defend just about anybody who benefits from dodging the death tax, even if they are hypocrites or buffoons.

P.P.S. Sadly, the U.S. death tax is more punitive than the French death tax.

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