Should Food Stamps Be Restricted to "Healthy Foods"?

As indicated by my post on how to handle prisoners with AIDS, I periodically run into issues where I'm not sure about the right answer. Here's another case. Politicians in New York have a proposal to prohibit people from using food stamps to buy sugary drinks. Part of me is irritated by paternalistic, nanny-state busybodies who want to tell other people how to live. On the other hand, maybe this proposal will make people less willing to mooch off taxpayers by accepting food stamps (though I suspect they'll just bring two carts to the checkout line, one with things that can be purchased with food stamps, and the other filled with sodas, booze, and other items that would require cash). The ideal answer, of course, is to get rid of the federal food stamp program and let states and communities experiment with the best way of handling these issues. Here's an excerpt from the AP report.

New Yorkers on food stamps would not be allowed to spend them on sugar-sweetened drinks under an obesity-fighting proposal being floated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson. ...If approved, it would be the first time an item would be banned from the federal program based solely on nutritional value. The idea has been suggested previously, including in 2008 in Maine, where it drew criticism from advocates for the poor who argued it unfairly singled out low-income people and risked scaring off potential needy recipients. And in 2004 the USDA rejected Minnesota's plan to ban junk food, including soda and candy, from food stamp purchases, saying it would violate the Food Stamp Act's definition of what is food and could create "confusion and embarrassment" at the register. The food stamp system...does not currently restrict any other foods based on nutrition. Recipients can essentially buy any food for the household, although there are some limits on hot or prepared foods. Food stamps also cannot be used to buy alcohol, cigarettes or items such as pet food, vitamins or household goods. ...There still are many unhealthful products New Yorkers could purchase with food stamps, including potato chips, ice cream and candy.

Where are the '60s Hippies Now that They're Needed to Fight Keynesianism?

Keynesian economic theory is the social-science version of a perpetual motion machine. It assumes that you can increase your prosperity by taking money out of your left pocket and putting it in your right pocket. Not surprisingly, nations that adopt this approach do not succeed. Deficit spending did not work for Hoover and Roosevelt is the 1930s. It did not work for Japan in the 1990s. And it hasn't worked for Bush or Obama.

The Keynesians invariably respond by arguing that these failures simply show that politicians didn't spend enough money. I don't know whether to be amused or horrified, but some Keynesians even say that a war would be the best way of boosting economic growth. Here's a blurb from a story in National Journal.

America's economic outlook is so grim, and political solutions are so utterly absent, that only another large-scale war might be enough to lift the nation out of chronic high unemployment and slow growth, two prominent economists, a conservative and a liberal, said today. Nobelist Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist, and Harvard's Martin Feldstein, the former chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, achieved an unnerving degree of consensus about the future during an economic forum in Washington. ...Krugman and Feldstein, though often on opposite sides of the political fence on fiscal and tax policy, both appeared to share the view that political paralysis in Washington has rendered the necessary fiscal and monetary stimulus out of the question. Only a high-impact "exogenous" shock like a major war -- something similar to what Krugman called the "coordinated fiscal expansion known as World War II" -- would be enough to break the cycle. ...Both reiterated their previously argued views that the Obama administration's stimulus was far too small to fill the output gap.

Two additional comments. First, if Martin Feldstein's views on this issue represent what it means to be a conservative, then I'm especially glad I'm a libertarian. Second, Alan Reynolds has a good piece eviscerating Keynesianism, including a section dealing with Krugman's World-War-II-was-good-for-the-economy assertion.

Taxpayers vs Bureaucrats, Part XLI

I've avoided this topic in recent weeks because it's too depressing, but this story is too outrageous to ignore. The County of Los Angeles has 199 bureaucrats who "earned" more than $250,000 last year. According to Census Bureau data for 2008, the median household income in the county was 55,000, Here's a blurb from the L.A.Times about incomes of the bureaucratic gilded class.

Nearly 200 Los Angeles County employees earned more than a quarter of a million dollars in 2009, according to a list of the county's top earners released late Monday in response to a Public Records Act request from The Times. The highest earners list was dominated by physicians and other medical personnel, but also included county firefighters and a handful of top sheriff's employees. Some of the best-known names on the list belong to elected officials — although none of the five county supervisors, who make $178,789 a year, qualified. ...The Times requested the base salary, overtime and "other earnings" for county employees whose total annual pay exceeded $250,000. "Other earnings" can include bonuses for special skills or responsibilities or unused benefits cashed out as taxable income, among other things. ...Overtime played a big role, with only 65 people making the list on base salary alone. Thirty workers made more than $80,000 in overtime. Twenty-two of them work for the county Fire Department, four work for public hospitals, two were psychiatrists for the Mental Health Department, and two were physician specialists for the Sheriff's Department.

Obama's Policy Failure, Part I

Former Senator Phil Gramm had a column last week in the Wall Street Journal that deserves two blog posts. This first post highlights Gramm's analysis showing that the U.S. has been very Keynesian compared to Europe, with numerous efforts to jump start the economy with deficit spending. But Senator Gramm hits the nail on the head, comparing America's tepid recovery with the better performance across the Atlantic.

During the average recovery since World War II, gross domestic product (GDP) surpassed the pre-recession high five quarters after the recession began. It has never taken longer than seven quarters. Yet today, after 11 quarters, GDP is still below what it was in the fourth quarter of 2007. The economy is growing at only about a third of the rate of previous postwar recoveries from major recessions. Obama administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner have argued that without their policies the economy would be worse, and we might have fallen "off a cliff." While this assertion cannot be tested, we can compare the recent experience of other countries to our own. ...There are 4.6% fewer people employed in the U.S. today than at the start of the recession. Euro zone countries have lost 1.7% of their jobs. ...This simple comparison suggests...that American economic policy has been less effective in increasing employment than the policies of other developed nations. ...While the most recent quarterly growth figures are just a snapshot in time, it is hardly encouraging that economic growth in the U.S. (1.7%) is lower than in the euro zone (4%), U.K. (4.8%), G-7 (2.8%) and OECD (2%).

Here's How to Balance the Budget

Our fiscal policy goal should be smaller government, but here's a video for folks who think that balancing the budget should be the main objective.



The main message is that restraining the growth of government is the right way to get rid of red ink, so there is no conflict between advocates of limited government and supporters of fiscal balance.

More specifically, the video shows that it is possible to quickly balance the budget while also making all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent and protecting taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax. All these good things can happen if politicians simply limit annual spending growth to 2 percent each year. And they'll happen even faster if spending grows at an even slower rate.

This debunks the statist argument that there is no choice but to raise taxes.

Talking Taxes on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano

I'm not a big fan of multi-guest panels, but I think this interview went well.

Are the Germans and French Really More Hostile to Big Government than Americans?!?

I always view polling data with a bit of skepticism, but I'm nonetheless embarrassed by new data from a 22-nation poll showing that German and French respondents are even more opposed to so-called stimulus spending than American respondents. If Americans are to the left of Europeans on size-of-government issues, that does not bode well for our future. On the other had, at least we're not as naive and/or stupid as Egyptians, Mexicans, Russians, Indonesians, and Nigerians. Here's a blurb from the summary.

In 14 of 22 countries most people--on average 56 per cent--favour an increase in government spending to stimulate the economy. This includes large majorities of Egyptians (91%), Mexicans (80%), Russians and Indonesians (both 78%), and Nigerians (73%). But majorities are opposed in a number of industrialised countries that had large stimulus programmes--Germany (66%), France (63%) and the US (58%).

The good news from the poll is that a majority of people around the world recognize that governments waste money at alarming rates. Americans think that 55 percent of their taxes are squandered. The Spanish, for inexplicable reasons, are most likely to think money is not wasted (perhaps because most of them have their snouts in the pubic trough?).

People believe that their government misspends more than half the money they pay in tax, according to the findings of a new BBC World Service global poll across 22 countries--but many are still looking to government to play a more active economic role. The poll of more than 22,000 people, conducted by GlobeScan/PIPA, found that people estimated on average that 52 per cent of the money they pay in tax is not used in ways that serve the interests and values of the people of their country. ...The countries with the lowest average estimate of misspent tax money were Spain (average 34% misspent), Indonesia (40%), Azerbaijan and Egypt (both 42%). The highest were in Columbia (74% misspent) and Pakistan (69%). In the world's two largest economies, Americans estimate on average that 55 per cent of their taxes are misspent, while in China the figure is 46 per cent. ...As well as being less likely to support action to address the deficit, those who have the highest estimates of tax misspending are less likely to support government stimulus spending--among those who think that more than three-quarters of their tax money is misspent, only 47 per cent believe the government should spend to stimulate the economy.

The full report can be read here.

Why Are We Paying $100 Million to International Bureaucrats in Paris so They Can Endorse Obama's Statist Agenda?

There's a wise old saying about "don't bite the hand that feeds you." But perhaps we need a new saying along the lines of "don't subsidize the foot that kicks you." Here's a good example: American taxpayers finance the biggest share of the budget for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is an international bureaucracy based in Paris. The OECD is not as costly as the United Nations, but it still soaks up about $100 million of American tax dollars each year. And what do we get in exchange for all this money? Sadly, the answer is lots of bad policy. The bureaucrats (who, by the way, get tax-free salaries) just released their "Economic Survey of the United States, 2010" and it contains a wide range of statist analysis and big-government recommendations.

The Survey endorses Obama's failed Keynesian spending bill and the Fed's easy-money policy, stating, "The substantial fiscal and monetary stimulus successfully turned the economy around." If 9.6 percent unemployment and economic stagnation is the OECD's idea of success, I'd hate to see what they consider a failure. Then again, the OECD is based in Paris, so even America's anemic economy may seem vibrant from that perspective.

The Survey also targets some very prominent tax loopholes, asserting that, "The mortgage interest deduction should be reduced or eliminated" and "the government should reduce further this [health care exclusion] tax expenditure." If the entire tax code was being ripped up and replaced with a simple and fair flat tax, these would be good policies. Unfortunately (but predictably), the OECD supports these policies as a means of increasing the overall tax burden and giving politicians more money to spend.

Speaking of tax increases, the OECD is in love with higher taxes. The Paris-based bureaucrats endorse Obama's soak-the-rich tax agenda, including higher income tax rates, higher capital gains tax rates, more double taxation of dividends, and a reinstated death tax. Perhaps because they don't pay tax and are clueless about how the real world operates, the bureaucrats state that "...the Administration’s fiscal plan is ambitious...and should therefore be implemented in full."

But even that's not enough. The OECD then puts together a menu of additional taxes and even gives political advice on how to get away with foisting these harsh burdens on innocent American taxpayers. According to the Survey, "A variety of options is available to raise tax revenue, some of which are discussed below. Combined, they have the potential to raise considerably more revenue... The advantage of relying on a package of measures is that the increase in taxation faced by individual groups is more limited than otherwise, reducing incentives to mobilise to oppose the tax increase.

The biggest kick in the teeth, though, is the OECD's support for a value-added tax. The bureaucrats wrote that, "Raising consumption taxes, notably by introducing a federal value-added tax (VAT), could therefore be another approach... A national VAT would be easier to enforce than other taxes, as each firm in the production chain pays only a fraction of the tax and must report the sales of other firms."

But just in case you think the OECD is myopically focused on tax increases, you'll be happy to know it is a full-service generator of bad ideas. The Paris-based bureaucracy also is a rabid supporter of the global-warming/climate-change/whatever-they're-calling-it-now agenda. There's an entire chapter in the survey on the issue, but the key passages is, "The current Administration is endeavouring to establish a comprehensive climate-change policy, the main planks of which are pricing GHG emissions and supporting the development of innovative technologies to reduce GHG emissions. As discussed above and emphasized in the OECD (2009), this is the right approach... Congress should pass comprehensive climate-change legislation."

You won't be surprised to learn that the OECD's reflexive support for higher taxes appears even in this section. The bureaucrats urge that "such regulation should be complemented by increases in gasoline and other fossil-fuel taxes."

If you're still not convinced the OECD is a giant waste of money for American taxpayers, I suggest you watch this video released by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity about two months ago. It's a damning indictment of the OECD's statist agenda (and this was before the bureaucrats released the horrid new "Economic Survey of the United States").

Warren Buffett: Good Investor, Crummy Economist

Warren Buffett once said that it wasn't right for his secretary to have a higher tax rate than he faced, leading me to point out that he didn't understand tax policy. The 15 percent tax rates on dividends and capital gains to which he presumably was referring represents double taxation, and when added to the tax that already was paid on the income he invested (and the tax that one imagines will be imposed on that same income when he dies), it is quite obvious that his effective marginal tax rates is much higher than anything his secretary pays. Though he is right that his secretary's tax rate is much too high.

Well, it turns out that Warren Buffett also doesn't understand much about other areas of fiscal policy. Like a lot of ultra-rich liberals who have lost touch with the lives of regular people, he thinks taxpayer anger is misguided. Not only does he scold people for being upset, but he regurgitates the most simplistic Keynesian talking points to justify Obama's spending spree. Here's an excerpt from his hometown paper.

Taxpayer anger against President Barack Obama and Congress is counterproductive because policy makers took measures including deficit spending to stimulate the economy, billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC. ...“I hope we get over it pretty soon, because it’s not productive,’’ Buffett said. “We will come back regardless of how people feel about Washington, but it is not helpful to have people as unhappy as they are about what’s going on in Washington.” ...“The truth is we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of gross domestic product,” Buffett said. “That’s stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.”

About the only positive thing one can say about Buffett's fiscal policy track record is that he is nowhere close to being the most inaccurate person in the United States, a title that Mark Zandi surely will own for the indefinite future.

Russian Government Announces 20 Percent Reduction in Number of Bureaucrats

I've already commented on Cuba's surprising announcement to slash the number of government workers. And I've complained about the federal workforce expanding in the United States. Russia wisely is following the Cuban approach on this issue (I never thought I would type those words!) and plans to get rid of 100,000 bureaucrats over the next three years.

Russia will cut its army of bureaucrats by more than 100,000 within the next three years, saving 43 billion rubles ($1.5 billion), Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday. "We assume more than 100,000 federal state civil jobs will be cut within three years. The government has already included a schedule for cutting the number of federal civil servants in the draft budget for the next three years and coordinated it with ministries and agencies," Kudrin told President Dmitry Medvedev, who in June ordered a 20 percent cut in the number of bureaucrats. Under the government plan, ministries and agencies will have to sack five percent of their staff in 2011 and 2012, and 10 percent in 2013. ...In the last three years, the number of bureaucrats in the federal government had increased by nearly 20,000, in regional governments by 60,000 and at municipalities by 50,000, he said.

The Laughable German Version of a Conservative

By choosing not to use the economic downturn as an excuse for more wasteful spending, Germany may have avoided Obama's big mistake, but that does not mean German conservatives and Angela Merkel are supporters of economic liberty and individual freedom. Not even close. A good (or should I say "bad") example of Merkel's statist mindset is her push for a tax on financial transactions. And not just a German tax. She wants a global tax. And not just for the typical political reason of wanting more of other people's money. Merkel has a megalomaniacal view that "every product, every actor, every financial market participant should be regulated." Ludwig Erhard must be spinning in his grave.

"We will continue to work for a tax on the financial markets," Merkel said in a stormy debate in parliament on her government's 2011 budget. "The finance minister is doing this in several discussions and we are going to try to persuade as many countries as possible. Unfortunately, the world is not always as we would wish ... but we are not going to give up," she added. At a meeting of European Union finance ministers earlier this month, members of the 27-country bloc clashed over the idea of imposing a tax of financial market transactions in Europe. The proposal, driven by France and Germany..., has run into stiff resistance from several countries, notably Sweden and Britain. At the level of the Group of 20 developed and developing nations, there is still more discord, with Canada and emerging market economies leading the battle against it. A G20 summit takes place in South Korea in November. "We are sticking to the principle that every product, every actor, every financial market participant should be regulated so that we have an overview of what is happening on the financial markets," Merkel said.

Does the War on Poverty Fight Destitution or Subsidize It?

The Census Bureau will be releasing new poverty-rate numbers on Thursday and the numbers are expected to show a big move in the wrong direction. Much of the coverage will be on how much the poverty rate increases, with 15 percent being a likely amount according to some estimate. There also will be lots of discussion about the political implications, as this Associated Press story illustrates.

The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency — are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings. It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

But the real story should be the degree to which the federal government's War on Poverty has been a complete failure. Taxpayers have poured trillions of dollars into means-tested programs, yet the data show no positive results. Indeed, it's quite likely that the programs have backfired. As shown in the chart, Census Bureau data reveal that the poverty rate was steadily falling in the 1950s and early 1960s, but then stagnated once the War on Poverty began. It's possible that there are alternative and/or additional explanations for this shocking development, but government intervention may be encouraging poverty by making indolence more attractive than work.

Is Obama the Next Hoover or the Next FDR?

Jonah Goldberg writes in National Review that President Obama is beginning to look like the next Herbert Hoover. This is rather ironic since the left wanted him to become the next Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ushering in a new era of politically-popular statism.

...the Great Depression discredited laissez-faire economics for a generation or more. Hoover, who was hardly the "market fundamentalist" FDR made him out to be, suffered largely from the (bad) luck of the draw, giving Democrats a chance to argue for a new deal of the cards. For reasons fair and unfair, Obama, who inherited a bad recession and made it worse, every day looks more like a modern-day Hoover, whining about his problems, rather than an FDR cheerily getting things done. Inadequate to the task, Obama is discrediting the statism he was elected to restore.

Jonah makes a compelling case, particularly from a political perspective. But if we look just at economic policy, the Obama-as-FDR analogy is more accurate. Hoover was a big-government interventionist with failed policies. That's a pretty good description of Bush. FDR got elected in 1932 by promising to fix the mess, which is akin to Obama's hope and change message in 2008. And, just like FDR, Obama then continued the big-government interventionist policies of his predecessor. The only difference is that Roosevelt somehow was able to remain popular even though his policies kept the nation mired in depression for another decade. Obama, by contrast, is veering dangerously close to becoming another Jimmy Carter. Tom Sowell has some key details about the timing and impact of the Hoover-Roosevelt policies.

The history of the United States is full of evidence on the negative effects of government intervention. For the first 150 years of this country's existence, the federal government did not think it was its business to intervene when the economy turned down. All of those downturns ended faster than the first downturn where the federal government intervened big time-- the Great Depression of the 1930s. ...if you look at the facts, they go like this: Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the 12 months following the big stock market crash of 1929 that is often blamed for the massive unemployment of the 1930s. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the October 1929 crash, and then began drifting downward. Unemployment was down to 6.3 percent by June 1930, when the first big federal intervention occurred. Within six months, the downward trend in unemployment reversed and hit double digits for the first time in December 1930. What were politicians to do? Say "We messed up"? Or keep trying one huge intervention after another? The record shows what they did: President Hoover's interventions were followed by President Roosevelt's bigger interventions-- and unemployment remained in double digits in every month for the entire remainder of the decade. There is another set of facts: The record that was set in 1929 for the biggest stock market decline in one day was broken in 1987. But Ronald Reagan did nothing-- and the media clobbered him for it. Then the economy rebounded and there were 20 years of sustained economic growth with low inflation and low unemployment. Can you imagine Barack Obama doing another Ronald Reagan?

Obama's Stimulus Means Redistribution from Poor to Rich

This New York Post chart shows that the already-bloated federal workforce expanded since the downturn began. And since compensation for federal bureaucrats is twice the average for other workers, it certainly seems like Obama is playing a perverse game of class warfare - particularly since ordinary Americans pay the price when so-called stimulus spending drains money from private capital markets and misallocates resources.

Obama's New Stimulus Schemes: Same Song, Umpteenth Verse

Like a terrible remake of Groundhog Day, the White House has unveiled yet another so-called stimulus scheme. Actually, they have two new proposals to buy votes with our money. One plan is focused on more infrastructure spending, as reported by Politico.

Seeking to bolster the sluggish economy, President Barack Obama is using a Labor Day appearance in Milwaukee to announce he will ask Congress for $50 billion to kick off a new infrastructure plan designed to expand and renew the nation’s roads, railways and runways. ...The measures include the “establishment of an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars and focus on investments of national and regional significance that often fall through the cracks in the current siloed transportation programs," and “the integration of high-speed rail on an equal footing into the surface transportation program.”

The other plan would make permanent the research and development tax credit. The Washington Post has some of the details.

Under mounting pressure to intensify his focus on the economy ahead of the midterm elections, President Obama will call for a $100 billion business tax credit this week... The business proposal - what one aide called a key part of a limited economic package - would increase and permanently extend research and development tax credits for businesses, rewarding companies that develop new technologies domestically and preserve American jobs. It would be paid for by closing other corporate tax loopholes, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy has not yet been unveiled.

These two proposals are in addition to the other stimulus/job-creation/whatever-they're-calling-them-now proposals that have been adopted in the past 20 months. And Obama's stimulus schemes were preceded by Bush's Keynesian fiasco in 2008. And by the time you read this, the Administration may have unveiled a few more plans. But all of these proposals suffer from the same flaw in that they assume growth is sluggish because government is not big enough and not intervening enough. Keynesian politicians don't realize (or pretend not to realize) that economic growth occurs when there is an increase in national income. Redistribution plans, by contrast, simply change who is spending an existing amount of income. If the crowd in Washington really wants more growth, they should reduce the burden of government, as explained in this video.

The best that can be said about the new White House proposals is that they're probably not as poorly designed as previous stimulus schemes. Federal infrastructure spending almost surely fails a cost-benefit test, but even bridges to nowhere carry some traffic. The money would generate more jobs and more output if left in the private sector, so the macroeconomic impact is still negative, but presumably not as negative as bailouts for profligate state and local governments or subsidies to encourage unemployment - which were key parts of previous stimulus proposals. Likewise, a permanent research and development tax credit is not ideal tax policy, but at least the provision is tied to doing something productive, as opposed to tax breaks and rebates that don't boost work, saving, and investment. We don't know, however, what's behind the curtain. According to the article, the White House will finance this proposal by "closing other corporate tax loopholes." In theory, that could mean a better tax code. But this Administration has a very confused understanding of tax policy, so it's quite likely that they will raise taxes in a way that makes the overall tax code even worse. They've already done this in previous stimulus plans by increasing the tax bias against American companies competing in world markets, so there's little reason to be optimistic now. And don't forget that the President has not changed his mind about imposing higher income tax rates, higher capital gains tax rates, higher death tax rates, and higher dividend tax rates beginning next January.

All that we can say for sure is that the politicians in Washington are very nervous now that the midterm elections are just two months away. This means their normal tendencies to waste money will morph into a pathological form of profligacy.

Heads, They Win; Tails, We Lose

State and local politicians have rigged the property tax system so they always come out ahead. When home values are rising (even if incomes are flat), they automatically collect more revenue. Sometimes they even decide to reduce the tax rate, though rarely if ever by enough to compensate for the rise in home values. But when home values are falling, that's almost always an excuse to impose a higher tax rate so that the bureaucrats don't have to worry about tightening their belts (that's a role reserved for us peons). The Tax Foundation has a new report showing that politicians collected more than 4 percent more money from property taxes even though home values dropped by 16 percent.

The recession that began in December 2007 was precipitated by a financial crisis which in turn was triggered by the popping of a real estate bubble, particularly in residential property. And indeed, property values did decline dramatically. The Case-Shiller index, a popular measure of residential home values, shows a drop of almost 16 percent in home values across the country between 2007 and 2008. As property values fell, one might expect property tax collections to have fallen commensurately, but in most cases they did not. Data on state and local taxes from the U.S. Census Bureau show that most states' property owners paid more in FY 2008 (July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2008) than they had the year before (see Table 1). Nationwide, property tax collections increased by more than 4 percent.

More Arguments Against a Value-Added Tax

The biggest long-term threat to fiscal responsibility is a value-added tax, as I've explained here, here, here, here, and here. So I'm delighted to see a growing amount of research showing that a VAT is bad news. Jim Powell has an excellent column at Investor's Business Daily that makes a rather obvious point about the wisdom (or lack thereof) of copying the tax policy of nations that are teetering on the edge of fiscal collapse (this cartoon has the same message in a more amusing fashion).

Drums are beating in Washington for a value-added tax in addition to the "stimulus" taxes, health care taxes, energy taxes and other taxes President Obama has imposed and wants to impose on hard-pressed taxpayers. Supposedly a value-added tax is a magic elixir for curing budget deficits and excessive debt. Quack remedy would be more like it. If it worked, you'd observe that countries with a VAT had budget surpluses and no debt problems. But almost every country that has a VAT is plagued with budget deficits and excessive debt. ... No surprise that the worst financial basket cases all have a VAT. Iceland has the highest VAT rates, but this didn't prevent its financial crisis and the near bankruptcy of its government. Italy's VAT rates are almost as high, and its debt exceeds its GDP. Financial crises are looming in Spain and Portugal, and of course they have a VAT. Greece has a VAT, too, and when politicians ran out of money to pay government employees for more than a year's worth of work every year, they rioted in the streets. Great Britain has a VAT, and its government finances are in the worst shape since World War II — its budget deficit is expected to be bigger than that of Greece. Moreover, the OECD has acknowledged that "(VAT) tax and transfer wedges have discouraged firms from offering employment and individuals from taking it, reduced employment and increased inequality."

And a new study by Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Cameron Smith finds evidence that a VAT would lead to bigger government.

VATs provide a significant amount of revenue. ...But do these significant revenues cause government spending to grow larger? Or is it the case that adoption of a VAT is evidence of the desire for a larger government so that the causal arrow runs from a taste for Leviathan to a VAT, and not the reverse? ...we find a statistically significant dynamic relationship between the rate of VAT taxation and the size of government. Although no single study is definitive, this is the first rigorous evidence that a VAT causes government to grow larger. ...countries that adopted a VAT did in fact experience, on average, a 29 percent increase in the size of government. ...The estimated coefficient of 0.262 indicates that adopting a VAT is associated with larger government. This estimate is statistically significant. ...our results shift the burden of proof to those who deny that VATs fuel increases in the size of the public sector.

This study jumps into a long-running chicken-or-egg debate in the academic literature about whether higher taxes lead to higher spending or whether higher spending leads to higher taxes. This causality debate is interesting, but I'm not sure it really matters. A VAT is a terrible idea if it triggers bigger government, and a VAT is a bad idea if it merely finances bigger government. But I suspect this study is correct. The key thing to remember is that Milton Friedman was right when he warned that "In the long run government will spend whatever the tax system will raise, plus as much more as it can get away with." This means that a VAT will allow more government spending and no reduction in deficits and debt, which is exactly what we see in Europe (and as Jim Powell noted in his column).

For those who like to watch rather than read, this video summarizes the arguments against a VAT.

Record Levels of Dependency Are Nothing to Celebrate

One of the big problems with statists is that they define compassion incorrectly. They think they are being compassionate when they take other people's money and give it to somebody that they define as being less fortunate. But genuine compassion occurs when you spend your own money. Another problem is that they define compassion by the number of people getting handouts from the government. A truly compassionate person, however, should strive for a society where the less fortunate are able to climb the economic ladder and no longer are dependent on redistribution programs. So it is definitely bad news that a record number of people - one out of six - now are on the dole in some form or fashion. Part of this growth in dependency is due to the economic downturn, but USA Today also notes that politicians have expanded eligibility and lured more people into dependency.

Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That's up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007. ...More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years. Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits. ...Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007. Benefits have been extended by Congress eight times beyond the basic 26-week program, enabling the long-term unemployed to get up to 99 weeks of benefits. ...As caseloads for all the programs have soared, so have costs. The federal price tag for Medicaid has jumped 36% in two years, to $273 billion. Jobless benefits have soared from $43 billion to $160 billion. The food stamps program has risen 80%, to $70 billion. Welfare is up 24%, to $22 billion. ...The steady climb in safety-net program caseloads and costs has come as a result of two factors: The recession has boosted the number who qualify under existing rules. And the White House, Congress and states have expanded eligibility and benefits.

Taxpayer-Funded Sex Trips to Amsterdam?!?

I think Viagra subsidies for sex offenders are an absurd example of government stupidity in America. I'm also amazed that European taxpayers are forced to pay for penile implants for bureaucrats at the European Commission. But I'm almost speechless to learn that British taxpayers are financing hanky-panky with prostitutes in Amsterdam for some disabled citizens. According to the Daily Mail, taxpayers across the pond also are paying for lap dances, though it's unclear why some beneficiaries are allowed to travel to foreign countries while others stay home. I have great sympathy for people who are disabled, and I certainly have no problem with them purchasing sexual services, but I agree with the guy from the Disability Alliance that this is not an appropriate role for government.

A 'man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers' money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute. His social worker says sex is a 'human right' for the unnamed individual - described as a frustrated virgin. His trip to a brothel in the Dutch capital's red light district next month is being funded through a £520million scheme introduced by the last government to empower those with disabilities. They are given a personal budget and can choose what services this is spent on. The man's social worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said his client was an 'angry, frustrated and anxious young man' who had a need for sex. ...The trip emerged in data from Freedom of Information requests which revealed that many councils are using the money from the government's Putting People First scheme to pay for prostitutes, visits to lap dancing clubs and exotic holidays. ...Critics yesterday said the use of taxpayers' money to fund sex trips abroad as 'deeply worrying'. In Greater Manchester and Norfolk, social care clients have used their payments for internet dating subscriptions. ...Neil Coyle, director of policy at Disability Alliance, said most people with disabilities did not want or expect the state to pay for sexual services. 'Public bodies don't exist to find people sexual partners,' he said.

New York Times Seeks Higher Taxes on the "Rich" as Prelude to Higher Taxes on the Middle Class

In a very predictable editorial this morning, the New York Times pontificated in favor of higher taxes. Compared to Paul Krugman's rant earlier in the week, which featured the laughable assertion that letting people keep more of the money they earn is akin to sending them a check from the government, the piece seemed rational. But that is damning with faint praise. There are several points in the editorial that deserve some unfriendly commentary.

First, let's give the editors credit for being somewhat honest about their bad intentions. Unlike other statists, they openly admit that they want higher taxes on the middle class, stating that "more Americans — and not just the rich — are going to have to pay more taxes." This is a noteworthy admission, though it doesn't reveal the real strategy on the left. Most advocates of big government understand that it will be impossible to turn America into a European-style welfare state without a value-added tax, but they don't want to publicly associate themselves with that view until the political environment is more conducive to success. Most important, they realize that it will be very difficult to impose a VAT without seducing some gullible Republicans into giving them political cover. And one way of getting GOPers to sign up for a VAT is by convincing them that they have to choose a VAT if they don't want a return to the confiscatory 70 percent tax rates of the 1960s and 1970s. Any moves in that direction, such as raising the top tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent next January, are part of this long-term strategy to pressure Republicans (as well as naive members of the business community) into a VAT trap.

Shifting to other assertions, the editorial claims that "more revenue will be needed in years to come to keep rebuilding the economy." That's obviously a novel assertion, and the editors never bother to explain how and why more tax revenue will lead to a stronger economy. Are the folks at the New York Times not aware that both economic growth and living standards are lower in European nations that have imposed higher tax burdens? Heck, even the Keynesians agree (albeit for flawed reasons) that higher taxes stunt growth.

The editorial also asserts that, "Since 2002, the federal budget has been chronically short of revenue." I suppose if revenues are compared to the spending desires of politicians, then tax collections are - and always will be - inadequate. The same is true in Greece, France, and Sweden. It doesn't matter whether revenues are 20 percent of GDP or 50 percent of GDP. The political class always wants more. But let's actually use an objective measure to determine whether revenues are "chronically short." The Democrat-controlled Congressional Budget Office stated in its newly-released update to the Economic and Budget Outlook that federal tax revenues historically have averaged 18 percent of GDP. They are below that level now because of the economic downturn, but CBO projects that revenues will climb above that level in a few years - even if all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent. Moreover, OMB's historical data shows that revenues were actually above the long-run average in 2006 and 2007, so even the "since 2002" part of the assertion in the editorial is incorrect.

On the issue of temporary tax relief for the non-rich, the editorial is right but for the wrong reason. The editors rely on the Keynesian rationale, writing that, "low-, middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers...tend to spend most of their income and the economy needs consumer spending" whereas "Tax cuts for the rich can safely be allowed to expire because wealthy taxpayers tend to save rather than spend their tax savings." I've debunked Keynesian analysis so often that I feel that I deserve some sort of lifetime exemption from dealing with this nonsense, but I'll give it another try. Borrowing money from some people in the economy and giving it to some other people in the economy is not a recipe for better economic performance. Economic growth means we are increasing national income. Keynesian policy simply changes who is spending national income, guided by a myopic belief that consumer spending somehow is better than investment spending. The Keynesian approach didn't work for Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s, it didn't work for Japan in the 1990s, and it hasn't worked for Obama. And it doesn't matter if the Keynesian stimulus is in the form of tax rebates. Gerald Ford's rebate in the 1970s was a flop, and George W. Bush's 2001 rebate also failed to boost growth. Tax cuts can lead to more national income, but only if marginal tax rates on productive behavior are reduced so that people have more incentive to work, save, and invest. This is an argument for extending the lower tax rates for all income classes, but it's important to point out that the economic benefits will be much greater if the lower tax rates are made permanent.

Last but not least, the editorial asserts that, "The revenue from letting [tax cuts for the rich] expire — nearly $40 billion next year — would be better spent on job-creating measures." Not surprisingly, there is no effort to justify this claim. They could have cited the infamous White House study claiming that the so-called stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent, but even people at the New York Times presumably understand that might not be very convincing since the actual unemployment rate is two percentage points higher than what the Obama Administration claimed it would be at this point.