When “Catching Up” Means Lower Income by Dan Mitchell

 My approach during the Trump years was very simple.

• If he did good things, I applauded.
• If he did bad things, I criticized.

Other people, however, muted their views on policy because of their partisan or personal feelings about Trump.

I was very disappointed, for instance, that some Republicans abandoned (or at least downplayed) their support for free trade to accommodate Trump’s illiteracy on that issue.

But those people look like pillars of stability and principle compared to the folks who decided to completely switch their views.

Max Boot, for instance, is a former adviser on foreign policy to Republicans such as John McCain and Marco Rubio, who has decided that being anti-Trump means he should now act like a cheerleader for high taxes and big government.

Here’s some of what he wrote in a column for today’s Washington Post.

Republicans accuse President Biden of pursuing a radical agenda that will turn the United States into a failed socialist state. …It’s true that Biden is proposing a considerable amount of new spending… But those investments won’t turn us into North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela or the Soviet Union — all countries with government ownership of industry. …with proposals such as federally subsidized child care, elder care, family leave and pre-K education — financed with modest tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals — Biden is merely moving us a bit closer to the kinds of government services that other wealthy, industrialized democracies already take for granted. …That’s far from radical. It’s simply sensible.

Part of the above excerpt makes sense. Biden is not proposing socialism, at least if we use the technical definition.

And he’s also correct that Biden isn’t trying to turn us into North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, or the Soviet Union.

But he does think it’s good that Biden wants to copy Europe’s high-tax welfare states.

…by most indexes we are an embarrassing international laggard. …the United States spends nearly twice as much on health care as a percentage of gross domestic product than do other wealthy countries… The United States is also alone among OECD nations in not having universal paid family leave. …Our level of income inequality is now closer to that of developing countries in Africa and Latin American than to our European allies. …it’s possible to combine a vibrant free market with generous social welfare spending. In fact, that’s the right formula for a more satisfied and stable society. In the OECD quality-of-life rankings — which include everything from housing to work-life balance — the United States ranks an unimpressive 10th.

Mr. Boot seem to think that it’s bad news that the United States ranks 10th out of 37 nations in the OECD’s so-called Better Life Index.

I wonder if he understands, however, that this index has serious methodological flaws – such as countries getting better scores if they have bigger subsidies that encourage unemployment? Or countries getting better scores if they have high tax rates that discourage labor supply?

But the real problem is that Boot seems oblivious to most important data, which shows that Americans enjoy far more prosperity than Europeans.

And he could have learned that with a few more clicks on the OECD’s website. He could have found the data on average individual consumption and discovered the huge gap between U.S. prosperity and European mediocrity.

The obvious takeaway is that big government causes deadweight loss and hinders growth (as honest folks on the left have always acknowledged).

P.S. I can’t resist nit-picking four other points in Boot’s column.

1. As show by this Chuck Asay cartoon, you don’t magically make government spending productive simply be calling it an “investment.”
2. Like beauty, the interpretation of “modest” may be in the eye of the beholder, but it certainly seems like “massive” is a better description of Biden’s proposed tax hikes.
3. It’s worth noting that Europe became a relatively prosperous part of the world before governments adopted punitive income taxes and created big welfare states.
4. America’s excessive spending on health is caused by third-party payer, which is caused by excessive government intervention.

P.P.S. I’ve wondered whether the OECD (subsidized by American taxpayers!) deliberately used dodgy measures when compiling the Better Life Index in part because of a desire to make the U.S. look bad compared to the European welfare states that dominate the organization’s membership? That certainly seems to have been the case when the OECD put together a staggeringly dishonest measure of poverty that made the U.S. seem like it had more destitution than poor countries such as Greece, Portugal, and Turkey.