The Benefits of Free Market Reform (chad)

No else seems to be using the open blog so I am going to abuse the privilege once more and then I will leave everyone alone.

One of the mantras of Democrat politics is that tax cuts favor the wealthy. How decreasing everyones tax burden while increasing revenues favors the wealthy is beyond me, but I barely graduated high school much less some high falutin' college like Harvard or Yale so I just have to Hillary and Obama at their word and assume that their superior education and intellect has led them to the correct conclusion. However, the people at TCS Daily are not quite that trusting and they actually looked at some numbers:

Every industrialised country in the world has launched free-market reforms during the past two to three decades. About a dozen of these countries have reformed substantially in a number of areas. The United States is one of these. But other countries have achieved more in areas where the US still has a lot do to. And the economic and social results from the reforms have often far exceeded expectations.

Spain managed to integrate more than one million non-European immigrants in the regular labour market, in a country with a population of 40 million. Openness to immigration was combined with temporary work contracts, de-regulations and tax decreases - later also combined with an amnesty for almost another million illegal aliens. Currently, employment rates among immigrants are at the same level as for native Spaniards.

Several countries cut taxes substantially and made them simpler. Ireland was the first country to decrease corporate tax radically, from 50 to 12.5 per cent. Average incomes have now doubled in one decade, and the low-income households decreased as a share of total households from 42 to 14 per cent in 15 years. Some 16 countries have introduced flat tax systems, making taxation simple and education beneficial.

The Netherlands launched a thorough health care reform, providing all citizens with private health care insurance - and care from providers in free competition. This allows choice, and most Dutch have used that right. It also benefits efficiency and quality. A price ceiling guarantees that people with chronic illnesses can afford treatment. Other countries have also opened up health care for competition, noticing increases in productivity.

I can't speak for anyone else but doubling incomes in 10 years and reducing povery levels by 2/3 seems to make a pretty substantial case for a decrease in tax rates to me.

Maybe you have to be an Ivy Leaguer for the logic to make sense.

If you are interested the people at adamsmith.org have a paper that looks at the effect of tax rates on revenues and GDP growth. It's pretty amazing what a well planned cut can do. (www.adamsmith.org/pdf/flattax.pdf)

posted by xgenghisx at 11:32 PM

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