Restoring America’s Assimilation Apparatus

amgreatness.com/2018/11/19/restoring-americas-assimilation-apparatus/

November 19, 2018

If the goal of immigration reform is to preserve American culture and prosperity, then the question would-be reformers would do well to ask is what strategies will have a chance at success.

Heated rhetoric about hordes of gangbangers and birth tourists overrunning our border will work, maybe, with about 40 percent of American voters. Cryptic escalatory references to how “the Second Amendment will save us” are futile jabberings. If it had to, the American government would deploy swarms of slap drones and other high-tech counter-insurgency gadgetry that would neutralize America’s rebel “militias” in hours. These are impossible options.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. American culture and prosperity can be preserved.

Immigration policy can move to a merit-based system, where admittance is based on applicants having valuable job skills, English language proficiency, good health, and cultural compatibility. There is a way to build a consensus among American voters that demands these reforms. The question is where to look.

As Henry Olsen explained in these pages recently, the Trump coalition has a tenuous hold on power—at best. “Whether it is regaining a portion of . . . RINOs or a winning a much larger share of Hispanic or African-American votes,” Olsen wrote, the president and the MAGA movement “need more supporters to succeed.”

How? Here it is necessary to consider the art of the possible. Are RINOs or liberals ever going to support immigration policies that preserve American culture and prosperity? Probably not. Those voters—mostly members of the upper middle class—love to virtue signal their aversion to any border policy that might invite even hints of “racism,” at the same time as they love the cheap labor that immigrants provide to clean their floors and cut their grass. They will be the last to be convinced.

What about “people of color,” those voters who constitute the other half of the Democratic bloc? Why should Trump Republicans settle for 10 percent, or even 40 percent, of their votes? What would it take for these voters, most of whom are either immigrants or have immigrant parents, to embrace American culture as passionately as the Irish and German immigrants of a century ago, and want to defend it?

The answer is simple: Attack and permanently discredit the forces in America that are doing everything they can to prevent assimilation. There are three critical fronts in this war.

University Campuses and K-12 Public Education
The degree to which the extreme Left now dominates university campuses in America defies brief description. America’s universities are training ethnic and racial minorities to despise traditional American culture and to believe they will experience lifelong discrimination in a hostile culture steeped in “white privilege.” But the programs that enable these seditious actions can be challenged in court, because they are discriminatory, they violate academic freedom, they undermine the economic value of an expensive college degree, and, in public universities, they waste taxpayers money.

Examples include the Orwellian diversity statements that applicants now have to submit to be considered for faculty positions. The discriminatory affirmative action plans. The segregation of “safe spaces.” The expensive, divisive, and economically useless ethnic and gender studies. The incredibly expensive “inclusion” and “diversity” bureaucracy. The abuse of Title IX by opportunistic bureaucrats and trial lawyers. Not only can court rulings destroy many of these programs, but people of color could be persuaded to reject such nonsense. Because the degrees they’re earning through them are worthless.

Rescuing America’s public elementary and secondary schools is equally important. There is no reason young people today cannot embrace America’s proud heritage regardless of their national origin.

But instead of receiving a balanced education that highlights America’s unique contributions to universal equality of opportunity, there is an inexorable shift towards textbooks that disparage the nation and its origins. Among the central figures in this growing movement to turn America’s youth against their own country is the late Howard Zinn. His hopelessly biased bestselling history text is designed to fill impressionable, rebellious youth with cynical resentment against everything that’s made America great: capitalism, private property, Christianity, democracy, meritocracy, the Protestant work ethic, and Western Civilization itself.

Fighting the leftist influence in K-12 schools starts with providing alternatives. Charter schools. Vouchers. Continuing to attack the Leftist agenda of the powerful teachers unions. These fights can play out in the courts, but they can also be fought at the grassroots. Because Leftist controlled public K-12 schools are failing to educate students. And the students who are the most negatively affected by Leftist mismanagement are those who live in low income, immigrant communities.

Exposing the Environmentalist Attack on the West
Nobody denies the urgency of many environmental challenges. Asian trawlers strip mining the oceans for protein. African poachers slaughtering critically endangered species. Chinese power plants belching so much soot they spread toxic clouds across half a continent. Rapid, unsustainable population growth across most of the planet’s equatorial regions.

The trajectory of all attempts to mitigate these genuine challenges is fatally slowed in deference to a corporate, fascistic imperative: Fighting “climate change.”

One may stop just short of declaring the entire climate change movement to be nothing more than a despicable hoax, inspired by globalist dreams of absolute profit and power. Humans can alter climate, probably more through land use than through CO2 emissions, but these impacts need to be honestly studied in order to consider practical options.

Instead, the climate alarmists demand that humans phase out all use of fossil fuel within a few decades. This is patently, ridiculously impossible. Moreover, even if it were possible, according to their own “scientific” projections, it’s already too late. So what’s really going on?

What the climate alarmists are creating, some of them consciously, others as unwitting accomplices, is artificial scarcity of virtually all critical resources; land, homes, electricity, gas and oil, water, transportation. This enriches wealthy elites who own the means of production. They eliminate competition, drive up prices, and collect higher returns. Throughout the Western World they have boxed in cities, supposedly to preserve “open space,” they’ve shut down power plants, they’ve prevented construction of dams and desalination plants, they’ve prevented projects to widen and upgrade roads. The solutions they’ve offered punish low-income communities most of all. High-density, high-rise apartments with sky-high rents. Expensive electricity and expensive gasoline. Water that’s rationed yet still costs more every year. Roads crammed beyond capacity, causing the most harm to those commuters who must live far from their jobs in order to afford their rent.

Why isn’t this an attack on immigrants? Why isn’t this an attack on people of color? Why should they continue to vote for people who used to allow land development to lower the price of land and housing, but now require everyone to cram into the existing footprints of legacy cities?

Why should they vote for people who reject the cost-effective solution of installing scrubbers on smokestacks to enable clean use of fossil fuel, and instead sell subsidized solar rooftop systems to the wealthy, which forces everyone else pay higher utility rates to fund the grid upgrades necessary to accommodate distributed power?

Why should they vote for people who, instead of just building a few dams and permitting desalination plants to supply water to coastal cities, impose water rationing and charge higher rates? Why should they vote for people who could widen the freeways, but instead pour hundreds of billions into mass transit solutions that are impractical and always end up underutilized?

It isn’t difficult to make this case. It takes courage more than money. Courage to be called a “denier.” But if enough people insist on a rational response to climate change alarm, “denier” will lose its power to silence. And the people who are the most negatively affected by leftist climate alarm policies are those who live in low income, immigrant communities.

Meeting Big Money with Big Money
Saving America’s culture and prosperity is tough, because most wealthy people don’t consider preserving America’s culture and prosperity as a high priority.

Their moral argument goes like this: We will shift people and capital to wherever we find the greatest return on investment, because if all of us maximize our returns, collectively we will foster more rapid global economic growth. That’s a comforting argument, especially when you’re disenfranchising an entire nation.

Alas, the argument has a fatal flaw.

American culture—and Western culture generally—is the engine that gave birth to individual rights, capitalist entrepreneurship, democratic republics, the rule of law, a sizable middle class, and the prosperity, adaptability, and stability that enabled their wealth. Not only do the ordinary people who are the inheritors and carriers of this culture deserve better but if their culture is destroyed, the security that wealthy people enjoy will also be destroyed. Hardcore leftists know this. The wealthy RINOs, including leftist and libertarian oligarchs, often do not. They are naïve.

In the November 2018 election, leftist oligarchs and NeverTrump billionaires vastly outspent the Republicans. Pierre Omidyar, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Tom Steyer, and George Soros, to name a few, spent hundreds of millions to elect Democrats and push left-wing policies. Usually reliable right-leaning oligarchs, such as the Koch Brothers, not only failed to match the torrent of funding from the left, but they were selective in their support, abandoning Republicans who were too “Trumpian.”

Not only were Republicans outspent in 2018 but the Democrats were smarter with their money. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who poured $123 million overall into 2018 midterms, funneled $3.8 million for targeted youth voter registration, voter contact, and get-out-the-vote efforts just in California, and just in toss-up congressional districts.

Democratic operatives collected individual voter data from online and offline sources, testing thousands of online ads, which allowed them to pinpoint which individual voters in pure Republican households were most receptive to crossing party lines. They recruited an army of amateur opposition researchers to “read every line of every document” of targeted Republicans’ lives, voting records, and disclosure reports.

Anti-MAGA billionaires did everything right. Their upgraded tactics, and their unprecedented funding, are here to stay. Who will counter their efforts?

There are 565 billionaires in the United States. Most of them are globalists; some are left-wing; some are libertarian. But not all of them. It would only take a determined effort by two or three of them, using their money as strategically as the Democrats and RINOs just did, to change the game. It’s time for some of them to step up. Because as it is, in the United States there are well established, well organized networks of think tanks and super PACs on the Left and the Right. But neither of these networks embrace a vision of American greatness that puts Americans first.

Understanding Who’s On Your Side
The battle to reform immigration laws and assimilate newcomers is not racial; it is cultural. The enemies of assimilation, for the most part, are globalist oligarchs and their mostly white liberal pawns.

There exists a vision of compassionate nationalism, however, that makes an uncompromising commitment to the interests of the American people, but does so in recognition that only a strong America—a very strong America—can help midwife the eventual emergence of a global civilization that embraces Western values.

The great independent voting bloc are those millions of Americans—nearly 25 percent of the population—who either have recently arrived in America, or are first-generation Americans. Many of them are intermarrying with whites, especially Asians and Latinos. These voters are up for grabs for a host of reasons.

To generalize, Asians resent being held back by affirmative action. Latinos resent being displaced by more recent immigrants. It’s the same story with blacks. And all people of color are increasingly receptive to the argument that Democrats have done nothing to help their communities. Welfare has failed. Unions have ruined public education. College courses in ethnic and gender studies are a joke. And as anyone with a smile and an open heart immediately learns, America is not a racist nation. We are the friendliest people on earth.

Americans are right to fear unchecked immigration. But their enemy is not the immigrants themselves. It is the liberal totalism that robs everyone of opportunities who is not already wealthy. It is leftist hatred that trains immigrants to dislike America and Americans. As the truth about the leftist elites is exposed, as they are accurately revealed as plutocratic, manipulative profiteers who are indifferent to the plight of ordinary Americans, people of color will join the MAGA movement. And with their participation, many white RINOs and moderate liberals will at last feel comfortable also joining.

Resistance to #TheResistance is not futile. With a positive, welcoming attitude, combined with a well-funded, winning national strategy, America’s new immigrants will be assimilated. And that will be a wonderful thing.

Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images

Re-posted with permission.

Are We About To Throw The Baby Out With The Bath Water?

Tom Kite is PGA Tour player whose low Major total belies his resume as a player….He only led the Tour in earnings twice, but he was the second Tour player to crack $1 million in a season (1989, a year after Curtis Strange did it), he finished in the Top 20 in money 17 times, and he was the first player to accumulate $6 million, $7 million, $8 million, and $9 million in career earnings.¹ Tom, although an excellent player was not Greg Norman, Ben Crenshaw, Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus; names one might expect to head that list. How? He did it by having a considerably higher finishing average than other players and naturally earned more prize money as a result.

In 1960, the New York Yankees lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3 games to 4. Amongst the Yankees’ roster were future Hall of Fame Players Berra, Maris and Mantle. Still the Yankees lost despite having scored a total of 55 runs to the Pirates’ 27 runs.

These stories seem relevant to today’s political campaign rhetoric. We are told our system is corrupt. It may be; but wouldn’t it be a good thing to look at where and how? In light of the twisted language of our politically correct consciousness, which makes honest substantive discussions on issues difficult at best, it would likely be prudent to ensure my words here are clear.

Ever since our nation’s founding, we, the average citizen, have had a say in our national elections and discourse. But, aside from our votes, it has never been direct. Our votes, other than on state and local initiatives, nearly always involve our selection of someone to represent us. We delegate our political desires to someone who, hopefully, will reflect our views when they cast their votes on specific legislation.

We are not, as a political structure, a pure democracy. Never have been, although it could be argued that we have moved more in that direction. Our founders did not trust a pure democracy: structurally, we are a representative republic.

“what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

– Federalist No. 51, James Madison

As Franklin, replying to a woman who asked as he left the Constitutional Convention, “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?,” stated, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.”

Note Madison states the obvious: government is necessary due to the flaws of humanity generally. Not that people are evil per se (though some most certainly are – Hitler & Stalin come to mind), but that self interest is a universal human characteristic. Yet, government, established to prevent individual self interest from becoming anarchy or rule of the jungle, is an organization run by people. So how do you prevent the very self interest government is set up to protect against from becoming a tool of those who work in government?

A republic. A pure democracy is essentially mob rule: 50%, plus one negates the 50% less 1 in all matters. That is law of the jungle, lynch mob governance. A republic on the other hand is a layered form of democracy that attempts to mitigate the aggregation of political power. This form is still imperfect because people are still people.

I’ve recounted all of this because we’re being told nearly every day how corrupt the delegate system is. When, in truth, if any one cared to go beyond the railings and look into the process, it is actually a full demonstration of the principles of our founders’ efforts to keep us from being our own worst enemy. How?

First, the delegate selection is NOT controlled, at least in one political party’s structure¹, by one centralized entity or small group of elites. Each state has it own rules, means and methods. This means that no one person or small group can control the outcome. A successful candidate must be able to navigate many different process rules, from state to state. It is much the same as a business in one state seeking to expand its offices to another state – they have to look at how the laws, taxes, etc., impact how they conduct business in order to successfully operate there.

This multi-faceted, variable process is accidentally brilliant. Accidentally because the states themselves and the state party structures were set up independently, over a period of decades, and through their own localized self interest developed whatever delegate process they thought would serve their own constituents best. Each of these statewide party representatives are individuals who got involved in the process because they wanted to influence the outcome however they could.

Perfect? Not at all. But it does keep political power less concentrated and more diverse. And that benefits us all.

Confusing? Yes. Corrupt? Not likely; it is just too diversified, too disconnected for full centralized control. Those who argue for pure democracy would do well to recognize the dangers of mob rule. Is that what you really want? How long would our society survive if that were how we decided things?

Don’t like the outcomes? Get involved. But regurgitating easy and disingenuous slogans which tend only to stoke emotional fervor is destructive. It is the very thing that lead to the rise of some of history’s most wretched atrocities. One only need look to 1789 France to appreciate the horror of the mob. Our elected officials, particularly in the last three election cycles, have not been as representative as many had hoped they would be as to the direction of the country, the size, scale and scope of government’s influence in our daily lives. But to allow that disappointment and frustration to literally blow up the layered system meant to protect us from ourselves is precisely what some advocate for – an utter collapse of the system allowing for who knows what.

It should be noted that what makes government necessary is at the same time the very thing that requires government be restrained and limited in size, scale and scope. Otherwise, we cease being even the imperfect representative republic.  The Constitution acknowledges the imperfections of humanity and attempts to allow each of us to enjoy individual liberty to pursue life as we envision it. It seeks to protect our God-given, unalienable rights by preventing each of us from using political power to our own advantage over one another. And while, we’ve done considerable damage to that bulwark, it is not yet fully lost.

But, if the tone and language, accompanied by blind, emotional outrage and verbal assaults are any indication, we could inadvertently usher in that which disassembles the very thing that ensures each and everyone of us are able to continue being a free people, to enjoy life as we would pursue it.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

– Benjamin Franklin

1.  PGA Tour Career Money Leaders History
2. The Democratic Party delegate process has what are known as “super delegates”. These delegates are solely controlled and assigned by the DNC directly to the candidate the Party decides, not the voters. CNN interview DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz explaining this: https://youtu.be/w5llLIKM9Yc

Lex Rex
April 20, 2016

No one can give you what is already yours

This is the first of “How Big a Life Do You Want” articles.

No One Can Give You What is Already Yours.

Rights. A lot is said about rights. Not all everything called rights have anything to do with what essential rights are. If one were to get down to the root of the matter – rights are first and foremost unalienable, inherent, part and parcel of your very being. If at any moment the idea is accepted that rights are anything but unalienable, part of your very existence, then what you think you have is no longer a right but a decree, edict, endowment or some specific benefit bestowed by some higher authority, usually some form of government or ruler.

In the first case, your rights are the basis of law; in the latter, laws define your rights. Further, if rights are inherent, unalienable then no person, entity or governing body can be said to have jurisdiction over your rights. This is because the rights of every individual emanate from each and every individual’s very existence; this bundle of rights exist a priori, proceeding any law or government.

This is precisely what was meant by that portion of the Declaration of Independence which reads:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Frédéric Bastiat in “The Law” says it this way:

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production–in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.¹

This cannot be understated: whether you believe in a God or not, if your rights begin and end with a governing entity, then you do not possess unalterable, unalienable, inherent rights. What you would have were little more than someone giving you at their discretion what they deem you should have. Their presumption is that they have the right and therefore the authority to decree as they see fit. How do they have such authority? Did you give it to them? By what right do they claim such power? Birth? Privilege? A superior intellect? Some high moral character that sets them apart and above the rest of humanity? Or is it mere political power?

Surely the ridiculousness of this notion can be see for what it is. If what you cling to as “rights” under this scenario can be dismissed at the whim and leisure of a ruling individual or group, then rights do not exist; only authority and political power. If rights are believed to be endowed by authority, and not inherent, unalienable, political structure doesn’t matter – it can be a true dictatorship, an oligarchy or a democracy (which is little more than soft tyranny of the majority).

Are you comfortable with the idea that what you believe you have as a right is nothing more than what another deems it to be? Or does it make more sense that rights are truly part and parcel of your being and the being of every individual? If these essential rights are inherently yours, then they are not and cannot be given to you.

No one can give you what is already yours: Life, Liberty, Property. Everything else grows out of this basic concept. Rights either are inherent and unalienable or law is based upon who rules at the time. The choice should be obvious.
Life, Liberty, Property – these are the essential rights each of us possess. You cannot have one without the other two. The existence of these carries with it your right to hold and enjoy these and to defend them, to keep them from being take from you.

This right of defense (to hold and enjoy one’s basic rights freely) is the foundation of all law. So, the purpose of Law is to protect the inherent and unalienable rights of every individual. Laws or legislation that violate anyone’s essential rights would then be contrary to the purpose of Law Theft and fraud are the taking of your property by force or coercion. Murder is the taking of another’s life. Slavery is the taking of one’s freedom and property. It is lawful to prevent theft, fraud, murder and slavery precisely because they take or attempt to destroy the essential rights of an individual or another group of individuals by another individual or group of individuals.

A characteristic of rights is that one’s possession and exercise of that right does not take from another. Your thinking, your speaking, your breathing, your own efforts do not directly cause the loss of the things in anyone else. Your Property, which begins initially with your own body, is not another person’s, nor does your mere existence, put an end to another individual’s having a body. Your right to maintain and improve your own existence does not preclude another person’s right to do so.

This may seem ridiculous to cover, but over the years so many assumptions have glossed over the basic concepts and observations of our own humanity and our relationships, they have to be mentioned. These are what make a truly free society possible,. Precisely because these are presumptive they are often overlooked and forgotten.

So what happens when the co-equal and inalienable rights of two individuals cross paths? Shall one merely use force to take what they want or need from the other? Or shall a mutually agreeable exchange be made to the basic satisfaction of both parties? Which of these choices would be the more civil and respectful? Which action represents freedom and tolerance?

I ask then, just how big a life do you want?

“The Law” by Frédéric Bastiat can be found in several places (it’s a mere 75 pages):

https://mises.org/library/law

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

http://www.constitution.org/cmt/bastiat/the_law.html

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss2.html

Senator Rand Paul’s Very Good Tax Plan Needs One Important Tweak

June 18, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Our nation very much needs fundamental tax reform, so it’s welcome news that major public figures – including presidential candidates – are proposing to gut the internal revenue code and replace it with plans that collect revenue in less-destructive ways.

A few months ago, I wrote about a sweeping proposal by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

Today, let’s look at the plan that Senator Rand Paul has put forward in a Wall Street Journal column.

He has some great info on why the current tax system is a corrupt mess.

From 2001 until 2010, there were at least 4,430 changes to tax laws—an average of one “fix” a day—always promising more fairness, more simplicity or more growth stimulants. And every year the Internal Revenue Code grows absurdly more incomprehensible, as if it were designed as a jobs program for accountants, IRS agents and tax attorneys.

And he explains that punitive tax policy helps explain why our economy has been under-performing.

…redistribution policies have led to rising income inequality and negative income gains for families. …We are already at least $2 trillion behind where we should be with a normal recovery; the growth gap widens every month.

So what’s his proposal?

…repeal the entire IRS tax code—more than 70,000 pages—and replace it with a low, broad-based tax of 14.5% on individuals and businesses. I would eliminate nearly every special-interest loophole. The plan also eliminates the payroll tax on workers and several federal taxes outright, including gift and estate taxes, telephone taxes, and all duties and tariffs. I call this “The Fair and Flat Tax.” …establish a 14.5% flat-rate tax applied equally to all personal income, including wages, salaries, dividends, capital gains, rents and interest. All deductions except for a mortgage and charities would be eliminated. The first $50,000 of income for a family of four would not be taxed. For low-income working families, the plan would retain the earned-income tax credit.

Kudos to Senator Paul. This type of tax system would be far less destructive than the current system.

That being said, it’s not perfect. Here are three things I don’t like.

1. The Social Security payroll tax already is a flat tax, so it’s unclear why it should be wrapped into reform of the income tax, particularly if that change complicates the possibility of shifting to a system of personal retirement accounts.
2. There would still be some double taxation of dividends, capital gains, and interest, though the destructive impact of that policy would be mitigated because of the low 14.5 percent rate.
3. The earned-income credit (a spending program embedded in the tax code) should be eliminated as part of a plan to shift all means-tested programs back to the states.

But it’s important not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, particularly since the debate in Washington so often is about bad ideas and worse ideas.

So the aforementioned three complaints don’t cause me much heartburn.

But there’s another part of the Paul plan that does give me gastro-intestinal discomfort. Here’s a final excerpt from his column.

I would also apply this uniform 14.5% business-activity tax on all companies…. This tax would be levied on revenues minus allowable expenses, such as the purchase of parts, computers and office equipment. All capital purchases would be immediately expensed, ending complicated depreciation schedules.

You may be wondering why this passage is worrisome. After all, it’s great news that the very high corporate tax rate is being replaced by a low-rate system. Replacing depreciation with expensing also is a huge step in the right direction.

So what’s not to like?

The answer is that Senator Paul’s “business-activity tax” doesn’t allow a deduction for wages and salaries. This means, for all intents and purposes, that he is turning the corporate income tax into a value-added tax (VAT).

In theory, this is a good step. After all, the VAT is a consumption-based tax which does far less damage to the economy, on a per-dollar-collected basis, than the corporate income tax.

But theoretical appeal isn’t the same as real-world impact.

Simply stated, the VAT is a money machine for big government.

• The VAT helped finance the giant expansion of the welfare state in Europe.
• And the VAT is now being used to enable ever-bigger government in Japan.
• Heck, even the IMF has provided evidence (albeit inadvertently) that the VAT is a money machine.

All of which helps to explain why it would be a big mistake to give politicians this new source of revenue.

Indeed, this is why I was critical of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan four years ago.

It’s why I’ve been leery of Congressman Paul Ryan’s otherwise very admirable Roadmap plan.

And it’s one of the reasons why I feared Mitt Romney’s policies would have facilitated a larger burden of government.

These politicians may have had their hearts in the right place and wanted to use the VAT to finance pro-growth tax reforms. But I can’t stop worrying about what happens when politicians with bad motives get control.

Particularly when there are safer ways of achieving the same objectives.

Here’s some of what I wrote last year on this exact topic.

…the corporate income tax is a self-inflicted wound to American prosperity, but allow me to point out that incremental reform is a far simpler – and far safer – way of dealing with the biggest warts plaguing the current system.

Lower the corporate tax rate.

Replace depreciation with expensing.

Replace worldwide taxation with territorial taxation.

So here’s the bottom line. If there’s enough support in Congress to get rid of the corporate income tax and impose a VAT, that means there’s also enough support to implement these incremental reforms.

There’s a risk, to be sure, that future politicians will undo these reforms. But the adverse consequences of that outcome are far lower than the catastrophic consequences of future politicians using a VAT to turn America into France.

To wrap things up, there’s no doubt that Senator Paul has a very good proposal. And I know his heart is in the right place.

But watch this video to understand why his proposal has a very big wart that needs to be excised.

 

 

For what it’s worth, I’m mystified why pro-growth policy makers don’t simply latch onto an unadulterated flat tax.

That plan has all the good features needed for tax reform without any of the dangers associated with a VAT.

P.S. You can enjoy some good VAT cartoons by clicking here, here, and here.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Does “Freedom” Mean an Entitlement to Other People’s Money?

June 10, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Maybe the warm weather is affecting my judgement, but I’m finding myself in the odd position of admiring some folks on the left for their honesty.

A few days ago, for instance, I (sort of) applauded Matthew Yglesias for openly admitting that punitive tax rates would put us on the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer Curve.

He still favors such a policy, which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more revenue.

Today, I’m going to indirectly give kudos to another leftist.

Writing for the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel openly argues that the meaning of freedom should be changed. Here’s some of her argument, and we’ll start with her reasonably fair description of how freedom currently is interpreted.

For conservatives, freedom is centered in markets, free from government interference. …Government is the threat; the best thing it can do is to get out of the way. …freedom entails privatization, deregulation, limiting government’s reach and capacity.

Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual”?

Heck, this is why I’m a libertarian. Sure, I like the fact that liberty produces more prosperity, but my main goal it to eliminate needless government coercion.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to her column. She complains that folks on the left have acquiesced to this traditional conception of freedom.

Democrats chose to tack to these conservative winds. Bill Clinton’s New Democrats echoed the themes rather than challenge them. “The era of big government is over,” he told Americans, while celebrating “ending welfare as we know it,” deregulation of Wall Street… Obama chose consciously not to challenge the conservative limits on what freedom means.

Then she gets to her main argument. She wants Hillary Clinton to lead an effort to redefine the meaning of freedom.

This is Hillary Clinton’s historic opportunity. …She would do a great service for the country — and for her own political prospects — by offering a far more expansive American view of what freedom requires, and what threatens it. …expanding freedom from want by lifting the floor under workers, insuring every child a healthy start, providing free public education from pre-k to college, rebuilding the United States and putting people to work… Will she favor fair taxes on the rich and corporations to rebuild the United States and put people to work? Will she make the case for vital public investments — in new energy, in infrastructure, in education and training — that have been starved for too long? Will she call for breaking up banks…? Will she favor expanding social security…? …to offer Americans a bolder conception of freedom…and set up the debate that America must decide.

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with such policies. How can “freedom” be based on having entitlements to other people’s money?!?

Heck, it’s almost like slavery since it presupposes that a “right” to live off the labor of others. But that’s not technically true since presumably there wouldn’t be any requirement to work. So what would really happen in such a society is that people would conclude it’s better to ride in the wagon of government dependency, as illustrated by these cartoons.

Which means, sooner or later, a Greek-style collapse because a shrinking population of producers can’t keep pace with an ever-expanding population of moochers and looters.

Nonetheless, I give Ms. vanden Heuvel credit for acknowledging that her preferred policies are contrary to the traditional definition of freedom.

To be sure, I’d admire her even more if she simply admitted that she favors government coercion over freedom. That would be true honesty, but I can understand that folks on the left would prefer to change the meaning of words rather than admit what their agenda really implies.

P.S. Some of you may recognize that the issues discussed above are basically a rehash of the debate between advocates of “negative liberty” and supporters of “positive liberty.” The former is focused on protecting people from the predations of government while the latter is about somehow guaranteeing goodies from the government.

P.P.S. As mentioned in Ms. vanden Heuvel’s column, today’s effort to redefine freedom is similar to the so-called economic bill of rights peddled in the 1940s by FDR.

Reposted from International Liberty.

The Ticking Fiscal Time Bomb of Social Security

May 11, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

America has a giant long-run problem largely caused by poorly designed entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

So when I wrote last month about proposals by some Democrats to expand Social Security, I was less than enthusiastic.

…demographic changes and ill-designed programs will combine to dramatically expand the size of the public sector over the next few decades. So it’s really amazing that some politicians, led by the clownish Elizabeth Warren, want to dig the hole deeper. …I’m surprised demagogues such as Elizabeth Warren haven’t rallied behind a plan to simply add a bunch of zeroes to the IOUs already sitting in the so-called Social Security Trust Fund. …If Hillary winds up endorsing Warren’s reckless plan, it will give us another data point for our I-can’t-believe-she-said-that collection.

But it turns out I may have been too nice in my analysis.

As reported by USA Today, independent researchers have discovered that Social Security is even more bankrupt than suggested by official estimates.

New studies from Harvard and Dartmouth researchers find that the SSA’s actuarial forecasts have been consistently overstating the financial health of the program’s trust funds since 2000. “These biases are getting bigger and they are substantial,” said Gary King, co-author of the studies and director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. “[Social Security] is going to be insolvent before everyone thinks.” …Once the trust funds are drained, annual revenues from payroll tax would be projected to cover only three-quarters of scheduled Social Security benefits through 2088.

By the way, I’m not overly enamored with this analysis since it is based on the assumption that the Social Security Trust Fund is real when it’s really nothing but a collection of IOUs.

But if you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe the Clinton Administration, which admitted back in 1999 (see page 337) that the Trust Fund is just a bookkeeping gimmick.

These balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures–but only in a bookkeeping sense. …They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury, that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.

In other words, what really matters is that Social Security spending is climbing too fast and consuming an ever-larger share of economic output.

That means – in the absence of reform – that more and more money will be diverted from the economy’s productive sector, in the form of taxes or borrowing, to finance benefits.

And when I write “more and more money,” that’s not a throwaway statement.

Returning to the USA Today report, academic experts warn that the long-term shortfall in the program is understated because it is based on 75-year estimates even though the program doesn’t have an expiration date.

The bigger problem with the Social Security Administration is not disclosure, it’s accounting, said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University professor of economics… Kotlikoff…wants the agency to calculate its liabilities using fiscal gap accounting, which considers the difference between the government’s projected financial obligations and the present value of all projected future tax and other revenue. …Under this accounting system, SSA’s projected unfunded liabilities would be $24.9 trillion (instead of the $10.6 trillion projected in 2088). …17 Nobel Prize-winning economists have endorsed Kotlikoff’s push for the SSA and other government agencies to use the fiscal gap accounting method more broadly. “We have a situation that is like Enron accounting,” Kotlikoff said. “And the public doesn’t want to hear about it.”

At the risk of being pedantic, I’m also not enamored with either approach mentioned in the above passage.

Sure, we should acknowledge all expenses and not arbitrarily assume the program disappears after 75 years, but the approach used to calculate “unfunded liabilities” is artificial since it is based on how much money would need to be invested today to finance future promised benefits (whether for 75 years or forever).

Needless to say, governments don’t budget by setting aside trillions of dollars to meet future expenses. Social Security, like other programs, is funded on a pay-as-you-go basis.

That’s why the most appropriate way to measure the shortfall is to take all projected future deficits, adjust them for inflation, and calculate the total. When you do that, the Social Security shortfall is a staggering $40 trillion.

And that’s based on just a 75-year estimate, so the real number is much higher.

Though keep in mind that this is just an estimate of the fiscal shortfall. What really matters is the total level of spending, not how much is financed with red ink.

Which is why the only real answer is genuine reform.

For further information, here’s the video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity on the need to modernize the system with personal retirement accounts.

But if you prefer to trust politicians, you can always support the left’s favored solution.

P.S. You can enjoy some previous Social Security cartoons here, here, and here. And we also have a Social Security joke if you appreciate grim humor.

P.P.S. The “Trust Fund” is real only in the sense that the government’s legal authority to pay benefits will be constrained when the IOUs are used up. That’s why the USA Today article says that the government at that point would be able to pay only about 3/4ths of promised benefits (though one imagines that future politicians will simply override that technical provision and require full payments).

P.P.P.S. Many nations have adopted genuine reform based on private retirement savings, including Australia, Sweden, the Faroe Islands, Chile, and The Netherlands.

P.P.P.P.S. Because of lower life expectancies, African-Americans are very disadvantaged by the Social Security system. A system of personal accounts presumably wouldn’t help them live longer, but at least they would have a nest egg to pass on to their kids.

P.P.P.P.P.S. And don’t fall for the false argument that financial markets are too unstable for personal retirement accounts

Reposted from International Liberty.

For additional information regarding Social Security: http://www.justfacts.com/socialsecurity.asp
Definition of a Ponzi scheme

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme
• http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm
• http://economics.about.com/od/financialmarkets/f/ponzi_scheme.htm

Spending Caps Are the Way to Prevent Unsustainable Fiscal Binges During Growth Years

The Alberta Example: Spending Caps Are the Way to Prevent Unsustainable Fiscal Binges During Growth Years

March 1, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Back in 2012, I shared some superb analysis from Investor’s Business Daily showing that the United States never would have suffered $1 trillion-plus deficits during Obama’s first term if lawmakers had simply exercised a modest bit of spending restraint beginning back in 1998.

And the IBD research didn’t assume anything onerous. Indeed, the author specifically showed what would have happened if spending grew by an average of 3.3 percent, equal to the combined growth of inflation plus population.

Remarkably, we would now have a budget surplus of about $300 billion if that level of spending restraint continued to the current fiscal year.

This is a great argument for some sort of spending cap, such as the Swiss Debt Brake or Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

But let’s look beyond the headlines to understand precisely why a spending cap is so valuable.

If you look at the IBD chart, you’ll notice that revenues are not very stable. This is because they are very dependent on the economy’s performance. During years of good growth, revenues tend to rise very rapidly. But when there’s a downturn, such as we had at the beginning and end of last decade, revenues tend to fall.

But you don’t have to believe me or IBD. Just look at federal tax revenues over the past 30 years. There have been seven years during which nominal tax revenues have increased by more than 10 percent. But there also have been five years during which nominal tax revenue declined.

This instability means that it doesn’t make much sense to focus on a balanced budget rule. All that means is that politicians can splurge during the growth years. But when there’s a downturn, they’re in a position where they have to cut spending or (as we see far too often) raise taxes.

But if there’s a spending cap, then there is a constraint on the behavior of politicians. And assuming the spending cap is set at a proper level, it means that – over time – there will be shrinking levels of red ink because the burden of government spending will grow by less than the average growth rate of the private economy.

In other words, compliance with my Golden Rule!

Let’s look at other examples.

Why did Greece get in fiscal trouble? The long answer has to do with ever-growing government and ever-increasing dependency. But the short answer, at least in part, is that a growing economy last decade generated plenty of tax revenue, but rather than cut taxes and/or pay down debt, Greek politicians went on a spending binge, which then proved to be unsustainable when there was an economic slowdown.*

This is also why California periodically gets in fiscal trouble. During years when the economy is growing and generating tax revenue, the politicians can’t resist the temptation to spend the money, oftentimes creating long-run spending obligations based on the assumption of perpetually rapid revenue growth. These spending commitments then prove to be unaffordable when there’s a downturn and revenues stop growing.

And as you can see from the accompanying graph, this creates a very unstable fiscal situation for the Golden State. Revenue spikes lead to spending spikes. During a downturn, by contrast, revenues are flat or declining, and this puts politicians in a position of either enacting serious spending restraint or (as you might predict with California) imposing anti-growth tax hikes.

And, in the long run, the burden of spending rises faster than the private sector.

We have another example to add to our list, thanks to some superb research from Canada’s Fraser Institute.

They recently released a study examining fiscal policy in the energy-rich province of Alberta. In particular, the authors (Mark Milke and Milagros Palacios) look at the rapid growth of spending between the fiscal years 2004/05 and 2013/14.

By the mid-2000s, even though the province was again spending at a level that contributed to deficits in the early 1990s, after 2004/05 the province allowed program spending to escalate even further and beyond inflation and population growth. The result was that by 2013/14, the province spent $10,967 per person on government programs. That was $2,002 higher per person than in 2004/05.

Why did the burden of spending climb so quickly? The simple answer is that bigger government was enabled by tax revenue generated by a prospering energy industry.

Over a nine-year period, politicians spent money based on an assumption that high energy prices were permanent and that tax revenues would always be surging.

But now that energy prices have fallen, politicians are suddenly facing a fiscal shortfall. Simply stated, there’s no longer enough revenue for their spending promises.

This fiscal mess easily could have been avoided if the fecklessness of Alberta politicians had been constrained by some sort of spending cap.

The experts at the Fraser Institute explain how such a limit would have precluded today’s dismal situation.

Had the province increased program spending after 2004/05 but within population growth plus inflation, by 2013/14 the province would have spent $35.9 billion on programs. Instead, the province spent $43.9 billion, an $8 billion difference in that year alone. That $8 billion difference is significant. In recent interviews, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has warned that the drop in oil prices has drained $7 billion from expected provincial government revenues. Thus, past decisions to ramp up program spending mean that additional provincial spending (beyond inflation and population growth) is at least as responsible for current budget gap as the decline in revenues.

And here’s a chart from the study showing how much money would have been saved with modest fiscal restraint.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. So now today’s politicians have to deal with a mess that is a consequence of profligate politicians during prior years.**

…the decision by the province to spend (on programs) above the combined effect of population growth and inflation between 2005/06 and 2013/14 inclusive built in higher annual spending obligations, that, once revenues declined, would open up a fiscal gap in the province’s budget. As of 2013/14, the result of spending more on programs than inflation plus population growth combined would warrant meant program expenses were $8 billion higher in that year alone. The province’s past fiscal choices have now severely constricted present choices on everything from balanced budgets to tax relief to additional capital spending. If the province wishes to have a better menu of choices in the future, it must, obviously, control expenditures more carefully.

Since I’ve shared all sorts of bad examples of how nations get in trouble by letting spending grow too fast over time, let’s look at a real-world example of a spending cap in action.

As you can see from the chart, Switzerland has enjoyed great success ever since voters imposed the debt brake.

Indeed, while many other European nations are in fiscal crisis because of big increases in the burden of government spending, the Swiss have experienced economic tranquility in part because the size of the public sector has gradually declined.

The key lesson isn’t that spending restraint is good, though that obviously is important. The most important takeaway is that spending restraint appears to be sustainable only if there is some sort of permanent external constraint on politicians. Like the debt brake. Or like Article 107 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.

Remember, there are many nations that have enjoyed good results because of multi-year periods of spending restraint. But many of those countries saw their gains evaporate because policies then moved in the wrong direction.

*Greek politicians also took advantage of low interest rates last decade (a result of joining the euro currency) to engage in plenty of debt-financed government spending, which meant the economy was even more vulnerable to a crisis when revenues stopped growing.

**Some of today’s politicians in Alberta are probably long-term incumbents who helped create the mess by over-spending between 2004/05 and today, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they opted for destructive tax hikes instead of long-overdue spending restraint.

P.S. On a totally separate topic, it appears some towns in New York are listening to the sage advice of Walter Williams on the topic of secession.

Here are some excerpts from an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal.

Some 15 towns have announced they want to secede from New York and become part of neighboring Pennsylvania. …The towns occupy four counties in New York State’s “Southern Tier,” just across the Pennsylvania state line. Pennsylvania allows fracking for natural gas… That part of Pennsylvania is booming. Upstate New York, as anyone who drives through it can attest, is an economic bummer. …Governor Cuomo has created an American version of the Cold War’s East Berlin—with economic life booming on one side of the divide, while an anti-economic ideology stifles it on the other.

Unfortunately, New York’s East Berliners will have to pick up and move if they want to benefit from better policy in the Keystone State.

There is no chance the secessionists will succeed, needing approval from the legislatures of New York, Pennsylvania and the U.S.

Another option, of course, is to decentralize decision making so that local communities can decide policy rather than faraway politicians in a state capitol.

That’s the approach that perhaps would have averted the catastrophe we now see in Ukraine, so why not try it in places where the stakes are simply jobs rather than life and death?

Reposted from International Liberty.

The Empirical Case for a Much Smaller Public Sector

February 22, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

As a fiscal policy economist who believes in individual liberty and personal responsibility, I have two goals.

1. Replace the corrupt and punitive internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax that raises necessary revenue in the least-destructive and least-intrusive manner possible.

2. Shrink the size of the federal government so that it only funds the core public goods, such as national defense and rule of law, envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers.

Needless to say, I haven’t been doing a great job. The tax code seems to get worse every year, and even though we’ve made some progress in recent years on spending, the long-run outlook is still very grim because there’s hasn’t been genuine entitlement reform.

But I continue with my Sisyphean task. And part of my efforts include educating people about the Rahn Curve, which is sort of the spending version of the Laffer Curve. it shows the non-linear relationship between the size of government and economic performance.

Simply stated, some government spending presumably enables growth by creating the conditions (such as rule of law and property rights) for commerce.

But as politicians learn to buy votes and enhance their power by engaging in redistribution, then government spending is associated with weaker economic performance because of perverse incentives and widespread misallocation of resources.

I’ve even shared a number of videos on the topic.

The video I narrated explaining the basics of the Rahn Curve, which was produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

A video from the Fraser Institute in Canada that reviews the evidence about the growth-maximizing size of government.

A video from the Centre for Policy Studies in the United Kingdom that explores the relationship between prosperity and the size of the public sector.

Even a video on the Rahn Curve from a critic who seems to think that I’m a closeted apologist for big government.

Now we have another video to add to the collection.

Narrated by Svetla Kostadinova of Bulgaria’s Institute for Market Economics, it discusses research from a few years ago about the “optimal size of government.”

If you want to read the research study that is cited in the video, click here. The article was written by Dimitar Chobanov and Adriana Mladenova of the IME

The evidence indicates that the optimum size of government, e.g. the share of overall government spending that maximizes economic growth, is no greater than 25% of GDP (at a 95% confidence level) based on data from the OECD countries. In addition, the evidence indicates that the optimum level of government consumption on final goods and services as a share of GDP is 10.4% based on a panel data of 81 countries. However, due to model and data limitations, it is probable that the results are biased upwards, and the “true” optimum government level is even smaller than the existing empirical study indicates.

Two points in that excerpt are worth additional attention.

First, they understand that not all forms of government spending have equal effects.

Spending on core public goods (rule of law, courts, etc) generally are associated with better economic performance.

Spending on physical and human capital (infrastructure and education) can be productive, though governments often do a poor job based on a money-to-outcomes basis.

Most government spending, though, is for transfers and consumption, and these are areas where the economic effects are overwhelmingly negative.

So kudos to the Bulgarians for recognizing that it’s particularly important to restrain some types of outlays.

The other point that merits additional emphasis is that the growth-maximizing size of government is probably far lower than 25 percent of economic output.

Here’s what they wrote, citing yours truly.

…the results from the above mentioned models should not be taken as the “true” optimal level of government due to limitations of the models, and lack of data as already discussed. As Dan Mitchell commented, government spending was about 10% of GDP in the West from the end of the Napoleonic wars to World War I. And we do not have any data to think that growth would have been higher if government was doubled or tripled. However, what the empirical results do show is that the government spending should be much less than is the average of most countries at the moment. Thus, we can confidentially say the optimum size of general government is no bigger than 25% but is likely to be considerably smaller because of the above-mentioned reasons.

And here’s their version of the Rahn Curve, though I’m not a big fan since it seems to imply that government should consume about one-third of economic output.

I much prefer the curve to show the growth-maximizing level under 20 percent of GDP.

Though I often use a dashed line to emphasize that we don’t really know the actual peak because there unfortunately are no developed nations with modest-sized public sectors.

Even Singapore and Hong Kong have governments that consume about 20 percent of economic output.

But maybe if I someday achieve my goal, we’ll have better data.

And maybe some day I’ll go back to college and play quarterback for my beloved Georgia Bulldogs.

P.S. Since I shared one video, I can’t resist also including this snippet featuring Ronald Reagan talking about libertarianism.

What impresses me most about this clip is not that Reagan endorses libertarianism.

Instead, notice how he also explains the link between modern statism and fascism.

He had a much greater depth of knowledge than even supporters realize. Which also can be seen in this clip of Reagan explaining why the Keynesians were wrong about a return to Depression after World War II.

And click here if you simply want to enjoy some classic Reagan clips. For what it’s worth, this clip from his first inauguration is my favorite.

Given my man crush on the Gipper, you also won’t be surprised to learn that this is the most encouraging poll I’ve ever seen.

Reposted by International Liberty.

America’s Anti-Competitive and Anti-Comity International Tax System, Part II

 

by Dan Mitchell

Last September, I wrote that America’s business tax system is a nightmare that simultaneously undermines the competitiveness of American companies while also causing lots of irritation in other nations.

Both of those bad things happen because politicians in Washington think the IRS should be able to tax income that is earned (and already subject to tax) in other countries. This approach, known as “worldwide taxation,” is contrary to good tax policy.

Indeed, all good tax reform plans, such as the flat tax, are based on “territorial taxation,” which is the common-sense principle that governments should only tax activity inside national borders.

Given the self-inflicted wound of worldwide taxation, particularly when combined with the world’s highest corporate tax rate, it’s easy to understand why some companies engage in “inversions” and become foreign-domiciled firms. Simply stated, that’s their best option if they care about the best interests of their workers, customers, and shareholders.

Well, the same problem exists for households. And it exists for the same reason. The United States also imposes “worldwide taxation” on individual taxpayers. But it’s even worse, because there are specific laws, such as the infamous Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, that impose absurdly high costs on Americans with cross-border economic activity, particularly those who live and work in other nations.

And just as our senselessly punitive corporate tax system drives corporations to re-domicile, the same is true for the personal tax code. As CNN reports, record numbers of Americans are officially giving up their citizenship.

The number of Americans choosing to give up their passports hit a record 3,415 last year, up 14% from 2013, and 15 times more than in 2008, when only 231 people renounced their citizenship. Experts say the recent surge is coming from expats who no longer want to deal with complicated tax paperwork, a burden that has only gotten worse in recent years. Unlike most countries, the U.S. taxes all citizens on income, no matter where it is earned or where they live. The mountain of paperwork can be so complicated that expats are often forced to fork over high fees to hire an accountant… “More and more are considering renouncing,” said Vincenzo Villamena of Online Taxman, an accountant who specializes in expat taxes. “There are a lot of uncertainties about FATCA…I don’t think we’ve seen the full effect that FATCA can have on people’s lives.” As both expats and financial institutions rush to understand the new law, some banks have chosen to kick out their Americans clients rather than comply. If a bank mistakenly fails to report accounts held by Americans outside the U.S. — even checking and savings accounts — they can face steep penalties.

Here’s a chart from the CNN article.

As you can see, there was a pause in 2012, perhaps because people were waiting to see what happened in the election.

But ever since, the number of people escaping U.S. citizenship has jumped dramatically.

To better understand how bad tax law is hurting people with U.S. passports, let’s look at the plight of Americans in Canada, as reported by the Vancouver Sun.

…many Ameri-Canadians are feeling rising anger, fear and even hatred toward their powerful country of origin. …The U.S. is the only major country to tax based on citizenship, not residency. …open displays of American pride in Canada are becoming even less likely as Ameri-Canadians seek shelter from the long reach of FATCA. …In addition, the flow of Americans leaving the U.S. for Canada more than doubled in the decade up until 2011, according to Statistics Canada. …Now — with FATCA causing investigators to scour the globe to hunt down more than seven million broadly defined “U.S. persons” it claims should be paying taxes to Uncle Sam — even more people in Canada with U.S. connections are finding another reason to bury their American identities.

Now let’s be even more focused and look at the impact on a single Englishman who happens to be the Mayor of London.

Johnson was characteristically forthright, describing FATCA as “outrageous”, and a “terrible doctrine of taxation.” Born in New York and having never given up his US citizenship, the London mayor cannot escape the clutches of FATCA, which requires that foreign financial institutions report the financial information of Americans. Those affected include many so-called “accidental Americans” like Johnson… What has seemingly brought FATCA to the front of Boris’s mind is the sale of his UK home, on which he is liable to pay tax in America. …What it does do – because of its host of serious, unintended, adverse consequences – is brand Americans, and accidental Americans choosing to live or work overseas, as financial pariahs. …Similarly, American businesses working in international markets are now often branded with a leprosy-like status. Clearly, this can only be detrimental to the country’s global competitiveness, and could, in turn, hit American jobs and the long-term growth of the economy. Questions should be asked about the imperialist characteristics of FATCA. Governments and foreign financial institutions have been coerced into complying with its expensive, burdensome, privacy-infringing, sovereignty-violating regulations by the US – or they have to face heavy penalties and the prospect of being effectively frozen out of US markets. And all this to “recover” an estimated $1bn (£637m) per year, which is enough, according to reports, to run the federal government for less than two hours.

As you can see, FATCA is a major problem.

And not just for specific taxpayers. The law is also bad for economic growth since it throws sand in the gears of global commerce.

Here are some excerpts from another news report, which includes some of my thoughts on the FATCA issue.

Critics say the FATCA has gone too far, is too draconian and is imposing an undue hardship on Americans living overseas. So says Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. He says the law is “causing lots of headaches and heartaches around the world, not only for foreign financial institutions but also for overseas Americans, who are now being treated as Pyrrhus because financial institutions view them as too costly to service.” The U.S. is one of the few countries that tax its citizen on the basis of nationality, not residency. And faced with a larger tax bill, thousands of Americans living overseas would rather give up their passports then pay a new tax to Uncle Sam. The Taxpayer Advocate’s Office of the IRS has reported that the FATCA “has the potential to be burdensome, overly broad and detrimental to taxpayer rights.” Mitchell says, “An American living and working in some other country is required to not only pay tax to that country where they live but also file a tax return to the U.S. No other civilized country does that.”

By the way, I didn’t say that the law was causing overseas Americans to be treated as “Pyrrhus.” I said they were being viewed as “pariahs.” But that’s the risk you take when doing oral interviews.

Returning to matters of substance, you’ll also be happy to know that FATCA is making people more vulnerable to identity theft. It’s gotten so bad that even the IRS was forced to issue an official warning.

The Internal Revenue Service today issued a fraud alert for international financial institutions complying with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Scam artists posing as the IRS have fraudulently solicited financial institutions seeking account holder identity and financial account information. …These fraudulent solicitations are known as “phishing” scams. These types of scams are typically carried out through the use of unsolicited emails and/or websites that pose as legitimate contacts in order to deceptively obtain personal or financial information. Financial institutions or their representatives that suspect they are the subject of a “phishing” scam should report the matter to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) at 800-366-4484, or through TIGTA’s secure website. Any suspicious emails that contain attachments or links in the message should not be opened.

Gee, nice of them to be so concerned about potential victims.

Though perhaps it would be better if we didn’t have intrusive laws in the first place.

The law is even so destructive that the Associated Press reported that it might be used as a weapon against the Russians!

As the United States attempts to punish Russia for its actions in Ukraine, the Treasury Department is deploying an economic weapon that could prove more costly than sanctions: the Internal Revenue Service. This summer, the U.S. plans to start using a new law that will make it more expensive for Russian banks to do business in America. “It’s a huge deal,” says Mark E. Matthews, a former IRS deputy commissioner. “It would throw enormous uncertainty into the Russian banking community.” …beginning in July, U.S. banks will be required to start withholding a 30 percent tax on certain payments to financial institutions in other countries — unless those foreign banks have agreements in place… But after Russia annexed Crimea and was seen as stoking separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, the Treasury Department quietly suspended negotiations in March. With the July 1 deadline approaching, Russian banks are now concerned that the price of investing in the United States is about to go up. …For Russia, the penalties could be more damaging to its economy than U.S. sanctions, said Brian L. Zimbler, managing partner of the Moscow office of Morgan Lewis, an international law firm. …The 2010 law is known as FATCA.

So what’s the bottom line?

As you can see, America’s worldwide tax system is bad policy, and it’s a nightmare for millions of innocent people thanks to ill-considered laws such as FATCA.

What’s really remarkable – in a bad way – is the complete lack of proportionality.

Back during the 2008 campaign, Obama claimed that laws like FATCA would generate $100 billion per year. From the perspective of tax collectors, that amount of money may have justified an onerous law.

But when the dust settled, the revenue estimators predicted that FATCA would bring in less than $1 billion per year.

In other words, the amount of money the IRS will collect is dwarfed by the damage to the overall economy and the harm to millions of taxpayers. Not to mention all the negative feelings against America that have been generated by this absurd law.

Yet very few politicians are willing to fight FATCA because they’re afraid that their opponents will engage in demagoguery and accuse them of being in favor of tax evasion. Senator Rand Paul is an admirable exception.

P.S. Since this has been such a depressing discussion, here is some good IRS humor to lighten the mood.

Reposted from International Liberty.

A Libertarian Valentine’s Day Message for Venezuela | International Liberty

A Libertarian Valentine’s Day Message for Venezuela

February 14, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Last year, I shared some libertarian humor relating to Valentine’s Day.

This year, we’re going to be a bit more on the wonky side.

Using roses as an example, we’re going to explore how the invisible hand of the market produces amazing results.

Here’s a great new video from Marginal Revolution University. Narrated by Professor Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University’s economics department, it explains how consumers have amazing access to millions of roses even though (actually because) there’s no agency or department in charge of Valentine’s Day.

And here’s a related video from MRU elaborating on the role of the price system.

The moral of the story in these videos is that a free and unfettered market is far and away the best method of allocating resources.

And the flip side of that lesson is that you get very bad results when politicians replace the invisible hand of the market with the visible foot of government.

Here’s some of what I wrote, for instance, when discussing proposals to give politicians power over wage levels.

…what’s really at stake is whether we want resources to be allocated by market forces instead of political edicts. This should be a no-brainer. If we look at the failure of central planning in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, a fundamental problem was that government officials – even assuming intelligence and good intentions – did not have the knowledge needed to make decisions on prices. And in the absence of a functioning price system, resources get misallocated and growth suffers. So you can imagine the potential damage of giving politicians, bureaucrats, and courts the ability to act as central planners for the wage system.

And here are some excerpts from a post about the damaging impact of subsidies to higher education.

Interfering with the price system is an especially pernicious form of intervention. When functioning properly, prices enable the wants and needs of consumers to be properly channeled to producers and suppliers in a way that promotes prosperity and efficiency. Unfortunately, governments hinder this system with all sorts of misguided policies such as subsidies and price controls. One of the worst manifestations of this type of intervention is the system of third-party payer, which occurs when government policies artificially reduce the perceived prices of goods and services.

And I could cite lots of other examples on issues such as the minimum wage, health care, housing, and agriculture.

Simply stated, you get all sorts of perverse results when politicians interfere with prices.

And that means lower living standards over time as the economy operates less efficiently.

Especially if a government really goes overboard and tries to regulate and control the entire economy rather than “just” interfere with a few sectors. Let’s look at the case of Venezuela. I’ve already written about how first Chavez and now Maduro have turned that nation into an economic hellhole.

It’s so bad that even the establishment media are taking notice.

Here are some passages from Matt O’Brien’s Wonkblog column in the Washington Post.

Venezuela…has the largest oil reserves in the world. It should be rich. But it isn’t, and it’s getting even poorer now, because of economic mismanagement on a world-historical scale. The problem is simple: Venezuela’s government thinks it can have an economy by just pretending it does. That it can print as much money as it wants without stoking inflation by just saying it won’t. And that it can end shortages just by kicking people out of line. It’s a triumph of magical thinking that’s not much of one when it turns grocery-shopping into a days-long ordeal that may or may not actually turn up things like food or toilet paper.

The government is trying to paper over its incompetence by printing money.

…the Bolivarian regime is to blame. The trouble is that while it has tried to help the poor, which is commendable, it has also spent much more than it can afford, which is not. Indeed, Venezuela’s government is running a 14 percent of gross domestic product deficit right now, a fiscal hole so big that there’s only one way to fill it: the printing press. But…paying people with newly printed money only makes that money lose value, and prices go parabolic. It’s no wonder then that Venezuela’s inflation rate is officially 64 percent, is really something like 179 percent, and could get up to 1,000 percent, according to Bank of America, if Venezuela doesn’t change its byzantine currency controls. Venezuela’s government, in other words, is playing whac-a-mole with economic reality.

And there’s also a pervasive system of price controls.

Venezuela’s government wants to wish away the inflation it’s created, so it tells stores what prices they’re allowed to sell at. These bureaucrat-approved prices, however, are too low to be profitable, which is why the government has to give companies subsidies to make them worthwhile. Now when these price controls work, the result is shortages, and when they don’t, it’s even worse ones. …it’s not profitable for the unsubsidized companies to stock their shelves, and not profitable enough for the subsidized ones to do so, either.

In the ultimate triumph of big government, Venezuela is even imposing controls on rationing!

…shortages, which had already hit 30 percent of all goods before the central bank stopped keeping track last year, have gone from being a fact of life to the fact of life. …People have lined up for days to try to buy whatever they can, which isn’t much, from grocery stores that are even more empty than usual. The government has been forced to send the military in to these supermarkets to maintain some semblance of order, before it came up with an innovative new strategy for shortening the lines: kicking people out of them. Now they’re rationing spots in line, based on the last digit of people’s national ID cards.

But you won’t be surprised to learn that all the problems are the fault of the private sector.

It’s a man-made tragedy, and the men who made it won’t fix it. Maduro, for his part, blames the shortages on the “parasitic” private sector.

It goes without saying, of course, that Maduro and the rest of the political elite avoid the consequences of bad economic policy. They all enjoy luxurious lifestyles, financed at the expense of ordinary Venezuelans. Moreover, I’m sure that Maduro and his cronies all have big bank accounts in New York or London.

So I can understand why they like the current system.

I’m genuinely mystified, though, why there are still people who think statism is better than capitalism.

I guess it’s mostly naiveté, a triumph of good intentions over real-world results.

Even though most of these leftists presumably would go crazy if they had to live without the products made possible by capitalism.

Just as portrayed in this video. And this satirical image.

Those of us who reside in the real world, by contrast, already understand the difference between capitalism and statism.

P.S. Venezuela is an economic basket case, but that apparently means it ranks higher than the United States on the “happy planet index” put together by some clueless statists.

Reposted from International Liberty.