Taxing Lessons from Europe for Hillary Clinton (a Supposed Fiscal Conservative)

I wrote yesterday about the Obama Administration’s head-in-the-sand approach regarding the anti-competitive nature of America’s corporate tax system (though maybe fiddling while Rome burns is a better metaphor).

Fortunately, some nations have more sensible policy makers. Even in Europe, which might come as a surprise to the pair of class warriors battling for the Democratic nomination.

Consider, for instance, what’s happening in Norway.

Norway will cut the corporate income tax rate to 23 percent from the current 27 percent by 2018…the country’s political parties announced on Wednesday. The basic personal tax rate will also be cut to 23 percent from 27 percent. …As part of the deal, further reductions in the company tax rate will be considered in the future. The compromise included…a small cut in Norway’s wealth tax.

What’s most remarkable about this story from Scandinavia is not that there’s a tax cut, though that surely would be a shock to Bernie Sanders’s mythological view of the Nordic nations.

I think it’s even more noteworthy that Norway already has a far lower corporate tax rate than the United States, yet the government is implementing a further reduction.

And Croatia also is poised to move policy in the right direction.

The reports from government circles that, as part of the tax reform, it could abolish the highest income tax rate of 40 percent have been welcomed by many observers. …“We support such a move. Croatia has a huge ‘brain drain’ of highly educated people, and they fall into the category of those whose salaries are covered by the 40 percent tax rate. Therefore, this decision would contribute to such people remaining in Croatia”, said Bernard Jakelić, the deputy director of the Croatian Employers’ Association. …Former Finance Minister Boris Lalovac (SDP) agreed that the abolition of the tax bracket would be a step in the right direction. …“Croatia is the only country in the region which has such a high rate of income tax. None of the countries in the region have income tax rates higher than 25 percent, and many countries have a flat tax. Its abolition would simplify the tax system and contribute to the reduction of the shadow economy. After all, the taxation of income at a rate of 25 percent is enough”, said Lalovac.

I especially like that the former finance minister makes both an argument based on tax competition and an argument based on the moral principle that there should be a limit on how much government should tax.

Maybe GOPer some day will be smart enough to include a moral component when seeking better tax policy. Especially if they learn that it’s politically persuasive.

So where can voters find a candidate who might implement such reforms in the United State?

Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post suggests that there is a “fiscally conservative” option already available.

Suppose you’re a hardcore fiscal conservative. …All you care about is getting the nation’s fiscal house in order. …the candidate you should vote for might surprise you. …the most fiscally conservative presidential contender left standing is…

Drum roll, please.

…Hillary Clinton.

No, it isn’t April Fool’s Day.

Ms. Rampell wants us to believe that Hillary Clinton is fiscally conservative because her agenda of much bigger government is matched by proposals for much higher taxes.

I’m not joking. Here’s what Rampell wrote.

Here’s the bottom line for the nation’s bottom line: Clinton’s spending increases and other proposals that cost money have a total price tag of about $1.8 trillion over the next decade. But her offsets, which come mostly from tax hikes, would save an estimated $1.9 trillion over that same period… Maybe when (if) voters start to notice this, Clinton will finally receive the praise she’s been due, from arithmetic fans and fiscal conservatives alike.

I suppose this is the point where I should explain that good fiscal policy is defined by a modest-sized government and a tax code that is designed to raise revenue in a relatively non-destructive fashion, not by whether lots of wasteful spending is okay if accompanied by lots of destructive tax hikes (i.e., a fixation on fiscal balance).

But I’ve made that point many times before, so instead I’ll merely observe that Ms. Rampell is either shockingly uninformed or (more likely) she thinks that she has some really stupid right-leaning readers who can be easily tricked into voting for Clinton.

And since we’re focusing on Mrs. Clinton’s ideological bona fides, ask yourself whether Ira Stoll of the New York Sun was describing a “fiscally conservative” candidate last December.

Call it Hillary’s Reichsfluchtsteuer. The former secretary of state and senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, reportedly will announce on Wednesday plans to impose an “exit tax” on companies that move their headquarters out of America or merge with foreign firms to escape America’s unreasonably high corporate taxes. …the Reichsfluchtsteuer, or Reich flight tax, was a 25% levy imposed originally…by the pre-Hitler, centrist government of Heinrich Brüning… Not exactly something to try to emulate. …As I pointed out back in 2012, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a product of the United Nations, says, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own” and “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” …it is unjust to force people or companies to stay where they do not want to be. …In 1963, at the Berlin Wall, President Kennedy said, “Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.” Hillary Clinton’s exit tax would do exactly what Kennedy said we’ve never had to do: set up a virtual wall, in the form of a tax, to prevent companies from leaving America.

There’s something rather odious about a politician who wants to extort money from taxpayers as a price for re-domiciling. As a general rule, only very evil regimes levy such taxes.

Speaking of unsavory regimes, let’s play a fill-in-the-blank game. Here’s the first sentence from a recent Associated Press story.

___________ is looking to increase revenue from taxation.

Is the answer Hillary Clinton? That’s a good answer, but not correct in this case. What about Bernie Sanders of Barack Obama? Once again, smart guesses but not accurate for this story.

Give up? Well, here’s your answer.

The Islamic State extremist group is looking to increase revenue from taxation.

I share this item because this it reminded me of the time I gave a speech about reforming the welfare state and a leftist in the audience basically accused me of being a racist because the KKK also didn’t like the welfare state. The fact that I urged reform in part because poor people are hurt by such programs apparently didn’t matter to my accuser.

That being said, if we accept his logic, I guess this means we can accuse Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama of being in favor of Islamic terrorism because they share a goal with the Islamic State crazies.

Sigh. Needless to say, Hillary isn’t a radical Islamist. Just like Obama isn’t a communist simply because he was endorsed last election by the former head of the U.S. Communist Party.

I just wish folks on the left were equally prudent about avoiding absurd guilt-by-association charges.

P.S. Bruce Bartlett also claimed (presumably for the same disingenuous reason) that Obama is a conservative because of his proposed tax hikes, so Ms. Rampell is not alone.

Read Full Post »

Why Is America Richer than Kazakhstan, and Why Has Estonia Surpassed Croatia?

Even small differences in economic growth make a big difference to living standards over time.

I frequently share this chart, which highlights how long it takes to double economic output based on different growth rates.

I also use real-world examples to show how some nations become much richer than other nations within just a few decades because of better policy and faster growth.

Here’s another way to approach the issue. Let’s use a hypothetical example to reinforce the importance of growth. If we went back to 1870 and assumed our economy’s nominal growth rate was one percentage point slower than it actually was (in other words, averaging 4.76 percent each year rather than 5.76 percent), our living standards today would be only 1/4th of current levels.

That’s a huge difference in national prosperity. We’d be about the level of Kazakhstan today!

In a column for the Wall Street Journal last week, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and businessman Louis Woodhill used the same approach to make a similar point about the incredible importance of long-run growth. They go back even further in time and come up with an even more sobering example.

The recovery that began in 2009 is the weakest in postwar history. Millions have dropped out the labor force, frustrated by lack of opportunity. Lower-income workers are underemployed, middle-incomes have not advanced as in the past, and government dependency has increased. …ignored is what really matters: rapid, sustained economic growth. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the U.S. economy will grow by a meager 2.3% over the next decade… At this growth rate, Americans face a future of stagnation, inequality and despair. Here’s why: From 1790 to 2014, U.S. GDP in real dollars grew at an average annual rate of 3.73%. Had America grown at the CBO’s “economic speed limit” of 2.3% for its entire history, GDP would be $780 billion today instead of more than $17 trillion. And GDP per capita would be $2,433, lower than Papua New Guinea’s.

This is why (good) economists are so fixated on economic growth. It’s vital for our long-run living standards.

Which means, of course, that we’re also fixated on the importance of free markets and small government. We understand that an economy will grow much faster if the burden of government is constrained (think Hong Kong or Singapore).

But if the public sector is bloated, with high levels of spending, taxation, regulation, cronyism, and protectionism, then it’s very difficult for the productive sector of the economy to flourish.

Let’s augment our understanding by comparing two nations, Estonia and Croatia, that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Estonia has been a role model for pro-growth reform. According to Economic Freedom of the World, the small Baltic nation quickly moved to reduce the burden of government (including a flat tax) and Estonia consistently has been in the top 20 of all nations.

Croatia, by contrast, has lagged. While its economic freedom score has improved, the progress has been modest and Croatia has never been ranked higher than #70.

So what are the real-world results of what happened in these two nations?

The simple answer is that good policy yields good results. Here’s a chart, based on IMF data, showing per-capita GDP in both Estonia and Croatia.

The most relevant lesson, which I highlighted, is that Croatia was much richer at the beginning of the post-Soviet period.

But Estonia quickly caught up because of its reforms. And over the past 10 years, Croatia has fallen significantly behind.

The key takeaway is that growth matters. And if you want growth, you need economic freedom.

Which brings us back to the aforementioned Wall Street Journal column. Cassidy and Woodhill are totally correct to worry about the “new normal” of anemic growth.

Fortunately, we know the policies that will rejuvenate the economy. And maybe we’ll get a chance to implement those policies after the 2016 election.

Read Full Post »

Greetings from Croatia

I’m on the coast of Croatia, preparing for a couple of speeches later today. As you can see from the picture below, the view from my balcony is spectacular, even for a rube like me. But this blog is dedicated to public policy, so time for a lesson about the inefficiencies of communism and central planning. My hotel may have a beautiful view, but it was built by the government during the communist era (when Croatia was still part of Yugoslavia) and it remains a state-run enterprise still today. This becomes apparent in many ways, including a breakfast buffet that is far less appetizing than the one at my hotel in Brussels. But the most revealing thing (and it would disappoint Al Gore) is the grotesque inefficiency of the heating system. There are no individual controls in the rooms. Guests merely control the fan, which pumps out heat in the winter and (one assumes) air conditioning in the summer. That doesn’t sound too unreasonable, but my room stays above 80 degrees even with the fan completely off. So I have been sleeping with the sliding glass door open, even though the outside temperature at night is in the mid-30s. But this is hardly an ideal solution. When the wind blows, I am too cold. When the air is calm, I am too warm. I don’t mean to whine, and I’m still glad to be in such a nice setting, but I can’t help but think that if a government can’t design and operate a hotel efficiently, what hope is there for government health care?

Read Full Post »