Trump’s CEA reports on an ideology that retards growth—and worse.
"In short, the Nordic tax systems are less “progressive” than ours. U.S. socialist Bernie Sanders claims that he wants the United States to emulate Scandinavia. That would mean driving U.S. tax rates on the middle class well above the levels we have now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanders has done so little investigation that he doesn’t know even that basic fact."
 |
| AfterMath - Home |
. . . "But the CEA economists don’t just rely on empirical economic models. They also use good economic reasoning to point out the basic problem with socialism: bad incentives. Following Milton and Rose Friedman, they note four ways people can spend money: (1) spend their own money on themselves, (2) spend their own money on others, (3) spend someone else’s money on themselves, and (4) spend someone else’s money on others. The fourth way accounts for most government spending. The authors note a huge problem: the spenders don’t economize (they’re spending other people’s money) and they don’t seek the highest value (they’re spending on others.) For that reason, socialism and government spending generally are very wasteful.
"They use this basic spending framework to criticize the idea, which has become popular on the American left, of Medicare for All. They quote New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman’s statement that under Medicare for All, “most people would gain more from the elimination of insurance premiums than they would lose from the tax hike.” The authors point out that Krugman fails to mention “any of the economic problems with spending someone else’s money on someone else.” (italics added)
"That criticism might account for Krugman’s calling the report “amazingly dishonest.” Krugman claims the report is “basically saying that if you favor Medicare for All, you’re Mao Zedong.” Not true. The authors note upfront that “Present-day socialists do not want the dictatorship or state brutality that often coincided with the most extreme cases of socialism.” Who’s dishonest?
"It’s easy to show that our mixed economy in the United States performs way better than the horrible socialist economies of Lenin’s and Stalin’s Soviet Union, of Chairman Mao’s Communist China, and of Fidel Castro’s Cuba." . . .More...
David R. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution. He is also a professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
No comments:
Post a Comment