The mess in Europe has been rather frustrating, largely because almost everybody is on the wrong side.

Some folks say they want “austerity,” but that’s largely a code word for higher taxes. They’re fighting against the people who say they want “growth,” but that’s generally a code word for more Keynesian spending.

So you can understand how this debate between higher taxes and higher spending is like nails on a chalkboard for someone who wants smaller government.

And then, to get me even more irritated, lots of people support bailouts because they supposedly are needed to save the euro currency.

When I ask these people why a default in, say, Greece threatens the euro, they look at me as if it’s the year 1491 and I’ve declared the earth isn’t flat.

So I’m delighted that the Wall Street Journal has published some wise observations by a leading French economist (an intellectual heir to Bastiat!), who shares my disdain for the current discussion. Here are some excerpts from Prof. Salin’s column, starting with his common-sense hypothesis.

…there is no “euro crisis.” The single currency doesn’t have to be “saved” or else explode. The present crisis is not a European monetary problem at all, but rather a debt problem in some countries—Greece, Spain and some others—that happen to be members of the euro zone. Specifically, these are public-debt problems, stemming from bad budget management by their governments. But there is no logical link between these countries’ fiscal situations and the functioning of the euro system.

Salin then looks at how the artificial link was created between the euro currency and the fiscal crisis, and he makes a very good analogy (and I think it’s good because I’ve made the same point) to a potential state-level bankruptcy in America.

The public-debt problem becomes a euro problem only insofar as governments arbitrarily decide that there must be some “European solidarity” inside the euro zone. But how does mutual participation in the same currency logically imply that spendthrift governments should get help from the others? When a state in the U.S. has a debt problem, one never hears that there is a “dollar crisis.” There is simply a problem of budget management in that state.

He then says a euro crisis is being created, but only because the European Central Bank has surrendered its independence and is conducting backdoor bailouts.

Because European politicians have decided to create an artificial link between national budget problems and the functioning of the euro system, they have now effectively created a “euro crisis.” To help out badly managed governments, the European Central Bank is now buying public bonds issued by these governments or supplying liquidity to support their failing banks. In so doing, the ECB is violating its own principles and introducing harmful distortions.

Last but not least, Salin warns that politicians are using the crisis as an excuse for more bad policy — sort of the European version of Mitchell’s Law, with one bad policy (excessive spending) being the precursor of an additional bad policy (centralization).

Politicians now argue that “saving the euro” will require not only propping up Europe’s irresponsible governments, but also centralizing decision-making. This is now the dominant opinion of politicians in Europe, France in particular. There are a few reasons why politicians in Paris might take that view. They might see themselves being in a similar situation as Greece in the near future, so all the schemes to “save the euro” could also be helpful to them shortly. They might also be looking to shift public attention away from France’s internal problems and toward the rest of Europe instead. It’s easier to complain about what one’s neighbors are doing than to tackle problems at home. France needs drastic tax cuts and far-reaching deregulation and labor-market liberalization. Much simpler to get the media worked up about the next “euro crisis” meeting with Angela Merkel.

This is a bit of a dry topic, but it has enormous implications since Europe already is a mess and the fiscal crisis sooner or later will spread to the supposedly prudent nations such as Germany and the Netherlands. And, thanks to entitlement programs, the United States isn’t that far behind.

So may as well enjoy some humor before the world falls apart, including this cartoon about bailouts to Europe from America, the parody video about Germany and downgrades, this cartoon about Greece deciding to stay in the euro, this “how the Greeks see Europe” map, and this cartoon about Obama’s approach to the European model.

P.S. Here’s a video narrated by a former Cato intern about the five lessons America should learn from the European fiscal crisis.

No, the U.S. Postal Service won’t close on August 1^st because it can’t afford to make a required $5.5 billion payment into a federal fund for postal retiree health benefits. Yes, the entire situation with the USPS is a mess. But when you have politicians ultimately trying to run a commercial operation, constant clean ups in aisle four are to be expected.

Here’s the situation:

1. The USPS is bleeding billions of dollars in red ink and has just about maxed out its line of credit with the U.S. Treasury.

2. In April, the Senate passed a bill that would buy the USPS time by effectively kicking the can down the road.

3. A more aggressive bill in the House sponsored by Rep. Darryl Issa (R‑CA) is unpopular with the postal unions, Democrats, and apparently enough Republicans that the votes are reportedly not there to get it passed. And if the votes are there, the House Republican leadership doesn’t appear to be interested in bringing it to the floor.

4. Even if the House passed a bill, it wouldn’t be easy for House and Senate conferees to hammer out a compromise given the differences between the two bills. Because there isn’t much space left on the legislative calendar, and it’s an election year, it’s hard to imagine that there would be enough time to get something done to avert a default.

5. It is possible that language will be added to appropriations legislation that postpones the payment. For example, every year Congress includes language requiring the USPS to deliver mail six days a week.

Again, no, the USPS won’t shut its doors in the event that it defaults on the payment. Beyond that, I’m admittedly not sure what – if anything – would happen. I operate on the assumption that the federal government can do whatever it wants. That means Congress, USPS management, and postal stakeholders will probably just continue to haggle over what to do.

The postal unions will continue to concentrate their fire on the mandatory postal retiree health benefit payments, which they argue Congress should simply make disappear. As I recently explained, however, “eliminating the payments won’t put the USPS in the black, and it would merely set the stage for a major taxpayer bailout down the road.” In fact, I believe policymakers should be asking themselves why postal employees should continue to receive a benefit that a small – and declining – share of private sector workers enjoy.

From a Cato essay on privatizing the USPS:

Opponents of pre-funding USPS retiree health benefits argue that private companies and the rest of the federal government are not legally required to do so. That is largely irrelevant. Retiree health care coverage is an increasingly rare perk in the private sector, and the federal government’s financial management is nothing to emulate. In 2008, only 17 percent of private sector workers were employed at a business that offered health benefits to Medicare-eligible retirees, down from 28 percent in 1997.

Note: For those interested in postal policy, Michael Schuyler has a new – and very interesting – paper out on the USPS and stamp prices. Of course, I want the USPS to be privatized and the market to set postage prices. However, if given the choice between a taxpayer bailout and a postage hike, I say hike away.

Thanks largely to the Laffer Curve, there are some impressive examples of failed tax increases in countries such as the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. But if there was a prize for the people who most vociferously resist turning over more of their income to government, the Italians would be the odds-on favorite to win.

When they’re not firebombing tax offices to show their displeasure, they’re taking to the high seas to escape.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the UK-based Telegraph about runaway yachts.

Thousands are weighing anchor and fleeing with their gin palaces to quiet corners of the Mediterranean to escape a tax evasion crackdown – part of efforts by the government of Mario Monti, the prime minister, to tackle Italy’s €1.9 trillion public debt. …in the ports and marinas they are going after the owners of luxury yachts. Uniformed officers of the Guardia di Finanza, or tax police, are performing on-the-spot checks, boarding boats and checking owners’ details against their tax records. …The unwelcome attention has led many yacht owners to flee Italy’s marinas for friendlier foreign ports, from Corsica and the Cote d’Azur in the west to Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Greece in the east. Others are heading southwards, to Malta and Tunisia — where they can access their boats on low-cost budget flights from Italy for a fraction of the tax bill they might otherwise face.

Not surprisingly, a lot of middle-class people are suffering because of lost business.

Around 30,000 yachts have fled Italy this year, costing €200 million in lost revenue from mooring fees, port services and fuel sales, according to Assomarinas, the Italian Association of Marinas. “We’ve lost 10 to 15 per cent of our regular customers,” said Roberto Perocchio, the president of Assomarinas. “This is the worst crisis in Italian boating history. The authorities are using scare tactics and creating a climate of fear.” …Plans for a further 30,000 new berths have been put on hold. Business is down by more than a third in many marinas, with some half empty compared to last summer. “We’ve lost 40 boats in the last few months, all between 20 and 25 metres long,” said Giovanni Sorci, director of a marina at Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. “Most went to Slovenia – in fact it is so popular that there’s now barely a berth to be had there. …At Porto Rotondo in Sardinia, Giacomo Pileri, the general manager of a 700-berth marina, said at least 150 boats had fled to nearby Corsica. …A steep new tax of up to €700 per day on the largest yachts mooring in Italian ports, introduced by the Monti government in December, was watered down in March to exclude foreign-owned boats. But it has further fuelled the exodus of Italian boats abroad.

And it’s not just yachts that are being targeted by a revenue-hungry government. Here’s a remarkable report from Reuters on what’s happened to the luxury car market (h/​t: suyts space).

Italians spooked by rising car taxes and highly publicized tax fraud spot checks cut back their purchases of Fiat’s high-end sports car brands Ferrari and Maserati in the first quarter of 2012, an industry body said on Tuesday. Ferrari sales slumped 51.5 percent, in Italy, and Maserati sales plummeted by 70 percent, said Italian car dealers group Federauto in a statement. Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government has stepped up its fight on tax evasion with spot checks on supercar drivers, as well as higher taxes on large cars. “These figures show how the choices made by the government are literally terrorizing potential clients,” said Federauto chairman Filippo Pavan Bernacchi.

I assume those awful sales numbers are partly because the economy is weak, but well-to-do Italians obviously don’t want to attract attention from the tax police.

The moral of the story is that Italy’s government should try a new strategy. The politicians need to understand that taxpayers don’t meekly acquiesce, like lambs in a slaughterhouse.

• When tax rates increase, sometimes people engage in tax avoidance, lowering their tax liabilities legally.
• When tax rates change, sometimes people choose to alter their levels of work, saving, and investment.
• And when tax rates go up, sometimes people resort to illegal steps to protect themselves from the tax authority.

Heck, even the folks at the International Monetary Fund (a crowd not known for rabid free-market sympathies) have acknowledged that excessive taxation is the leading cause of the shadow economy.

So rather than trying to squeeze more blood from an unwilling stone, maybe the Italian government should junk the current tax code and adopt a simple and fair flat tax.

To conclude, here’s Part II of the three-part video series on the Laffer Curve, which focuses on historical evidence (including what happened to the yacht market in the U.S. when politicians went after the “rich”).

Sort of makes you wonder why politicians never seem to learn from their mistakes — especially when thoughtful people like me give them free lessons about the relationship between tax rates, tax revenue, and taxable income.

P.S. While I’m very happy to defend tax evasion in cases where government is excessive, venal, and/​or corrupt, I suspect that Italians would evade even if they lived under a Hong Kong-style fiscal regime. If that ever happened (don’t hold your breath), even I wouldn’t get upset about crackdowns on yacht owners and Maserati drivers who aren’t declaring any income.

The Congressional Budget Office’s score of the farm bill passed in the Senate estimates that it would save $23 billion (versus the current baseline) over ten years. It’s score of the bill that came out of the House Agriculture Committee estimates savings of $35 billion. However, the previous three farm bills ended up costing more than the CBO originally estimated:

• The 1996 farm bill was supposed to phase out farm subsidies. Instead, crop prices fell and Congress responded with multiple “emergency” bailouts. From a 2001 paper on farm subsidies written by Chris Edwards and me:

When the FAIR Act was passed, the Congressional Budget Office projected that $47 billion would be spent on direct farm subsidies during its seven-year authorization. Instead, direct farm subsidies will end up costing $118 billion, including projected spending for fiscal 2002, over seven years.

• The CBO estimated that the six-year cost of the 2002 farm bill’s major provisions would be $264 billion. According to the Congressional Research Service, the actual cost was $270 billion. That’s pretty close, but only because much larger outlays for food stamps exceeded much lower outlays for farm subsidies.

• The CBO estimated that the five-year cost of the 2008 farm bill’s major provisions would be $272 billion. A Congressional Research Service report from December 2010 estimated that the bill would end up costing $402 billion. Commodity programs came in lower, but crop insurance and, in particular, food stamps, came in much higher. Whatever the actual final tally ends up being, it will certainly be higher than what was originally projected.

The point isn’t to beat up on CBO. The point is that trying to project how much a bill is going to cost over ten years – let alone one year – is an inexact science. The cost of farm subsidies depends in part on commodity prices and yields. The cost of food stamps depends in part on the condition of the economy. And Congress can decide to facilitate more spending on these programs whenever it wants. Thus, claims made by members of Congress that either farm bill will save taxpayers X amount of money over the next ten years should be met with the rolling of eyeballs.

I’ve run across very few good cartoons about Keynesian economics. If my aging memory is correct, I’ve only posted two of them.

But at least they’re both very good. We have one involving Obama, sharks, and a lifeboat, and another one involving an overburdened jockey.

Now we have a third cartoon, by Australian freelancer Jon Kudelka, to add to the collection:

To provide a bit of additional background, the cartoon is channeling Bastiat’s broken-window insight that make-work projects don’t create prosperity, as explained in this short video narrated by Tom Palmer.

I make similar points in this post mocking Paul Krugman’s wish for an alien invasion and this post explaining why Obama’s green energy programs lead to net job destruction.

P.S. This Wizard of Id parody is the best cartoon about economics, but it teaches about labor markets rather than Keynesianism.

I realize it’s a bold assertion, but the $100 million that American taxpayers send to Paris every year to subsidize the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is – on a per-dollar basis – the most destructively wasteful part in the federal budget.

This video will give you some evidence.

But the video also is a couple of years old, so it doesn’t even include some of the more recent and most outrageous examples of OECD perfidy.

• The OECD has allied itself with the nutjobs from the so-called Occupy movement to push for bigger government and higher taxes.
• The OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or Turkey.
• The OECD is pushing a “Multilateral Convention” that is designed to become something akin to a World Tax Organization, with the power to persecute nations with free-market tax policy.
• The OECD has endorsed Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”

The good news is that more and more people are sounding the alarm bells about this wretched bureaucracy.

Richard Rahn excoriates the statist swamp in his Washington Times column.

Most Americans probably would not approve of their tax dollars being used to support an international organization that undermines their fundamental liberties and promotes giving their hard-earned money to other governments, often run by corrupt or dictatorial regimes. This is precisely what the OECD is doing… The OECD was formed in 1960 to promote trade and investment among the developed countries. Over the years, it has morphed into an organization promoting higher taxes and the redistribution of income… Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and well-known tax economist, has closely followed the efforts of the OECD in promoting bigger government and more statism. In his extensive work, he has described how the OECD’s “anti-tax competition project” is designed to prop up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states and how its advocacy of “higher marginal tax rates,” a “value-added tax” and “failed Keynesian stimulus” for the U.S. reduces economic growth. (Note: OECD bureaucrats work out of plush offices in Paris, travel first class and have tax-free salaries.) It is worth repeating: U.S. taxpayers are supporting high-salaried international bureaucrats who are advocating higher taxes on others, most notably U.S. taxpayers, but do not pay income taxes themselves. Hypocrisy abounds. …serious and fiscally responsible members of Congress have the ability to knock all or part of the OECD funding out of the budget through amendments, provided they can get a majority of their fellow members to vote with them. The major limited-government, free-market organizations have endorsed a cutback in OECD funding.

And here’s some of what Dennis Kleinfeld wrote for IFC Review. He starts with a bit of history and explains how OECD bureaucrats live a good life at our expense.

The Organisation of Cooperation and Development has been in existence since 1960. …The OECD’s purpose was to pave the way “for a new era of cooperation….” that started with the US and Europe and now essentially encompasses as members or to-be members virtually all the dominant industrial powers. The OECD Secretary General, Deputy Secretaries, and heads of the Directorates are non-elected administrators and policy-makers, who live in Paris tax free (except for the Americans), travel first class, live first class, and whose every expense is paid for by the member states from taxes or money borrowed. These are the guys who tell everyone else to pay their fair share of taxes and share in making sacrifices for the greater good of all. This reminds me that we should never confuse the Hippocratic Oath with hypocrisy.

He then puts forth a strong hypothesis.

In a colourful sense, the OECD is (if you remember Star Trek) the Borg of organisations. Looking around the world today, I believe it can be concluded that the OECD approach to solving the world’s problems has solved nothing but has created even greater, perhaps now nearly insurmountable difficulties.

And he backs up his assertion by pointing out how the OECD is undermining the global economy.

The OECD promotes tax policies to create tax harmony, eliminate tax competition, and end tax abuse. To achieve this, the OECD has found that it becomes ever necessary to impose draconian and oppressive measures in order to make the income tax system work. Any idea of cooperative economic prosperity, encouragement of trans-national capital flows, international trade, or making global investing a seamless effort has been sacrificed on the altar of the income tax system.

And he shows examples of how OECD-supported policies are causing trouble and reducing liberty.

The OECD has long promoted such means to enforce income tax compliance. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that FACTA has gone too far and the backlash is being dramatically felt across all sectors of the US economy. Why then is it such a surprise that combining short sighted legislation with an already failing tax policy would result in rapidly accelerating an already declining economy? The OECD is mandating and leading what seems to be a cavalry charge over the financial and social edge into chaos. Its weapon of choice, the income tax system, is not achieving success for the taxpayers in this battle; rather it is assuring the defeat of individual liberties, the natural desire for privacy, and the freedom to live without the fear of arbitrary governmental retribution. Perhaps George Orwell’s classic books 1984 and Animal Farm are not works of fiction but accurate previews of what the world will look like as the policies of the OECD create the future.

He then offers a strong conclusion about the OECD’s collectivist program.

After 61 years of the OECD providing its services in the interests of international cooperation and economic development policies, it is safe to say that there is a lack of demonstratable proof that the OECD policies have actually been a positive factor in the world’s affairs. In fact, the contrary seems to be the true. I am quite convinced that the OECD functionaries have proceeded under the fixed ideological beliefs that global social happiness and economic prosperity can only be achieved when individuals subordinate their economic freedom and liberties to the interests of the collective, a utopian view of society. They are wrong. The state of the world proves otherwise.

By the way, if you’re not convinced that the OECD is a cancer that need to be cut out, here are a few additional distressing bits of evidence.

• The OECD has an anti-tax competition project designed to prop up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states.
• The OECD pulled off a hat trick of bad policy in a 2010 document, promoting a value-added tax, Obama’s global warming agenda, and failed Keynesian stimulus.
• The OECD endorsed Obamacare policies, as I explain in this video.
• The OECD even advocates higher taxes when nations are in the middle of economic crisis.
• The OECD also is pushing for higher taxes in Latin America, based on the odd notion that those nations should copy Europe’s failed welfare states.

Removing American-financed subsidies from the OECD won’t necessarily put an end to this corrupt and statist bureaucracy. But at least American taxpayers won’t be violated to subsidize the pampered officials who drive the OECD’s biased agenda.

And without America support, it is highly doubtful that the OECD would have any ability to bully nations into expanding the burden of government.

That’s a win-win situation for America and the world.

A favorite talking point among redistributionists is to say the tax code was much “fairer” under President Bill Clinton, than it has been since the Bush tax cuts of 2003. New Congressional Budget Office (CBO) figures show that the top 1% paid 21.3% of all federal taxes from 1993 to 2000, when Clinton was president, but they paid 25.1% from 2003 to 2008, after the Bush tax cuts. If 21.3% was a fair share in the Clinton years, then the top 1% has been paying much more than its fair share since 2003.

In a June 12 Wall Street Journal article, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg write that “Some conservatives seem breathlessly excited by new academic studies … that put middle-income gains at princely 37% over three decades—failing to note that … most of the gains came in the Clinton era when taxes were raised on the wealthiest and government tax credits expanded for the working poor.” The source of that 37% figure is undisclosed, but the number is way too low. Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and Francis X. Sullivan of Notre Dame estimate that “between 1980 and 2009, median after-tax income plus noncash benefits grew by 58 percent.”

Similarly, the CBO finds that after-tax median household income rose by 48.8 percent from 1980 to 2009, after properly adjusting for shrinking household size (more singles, fewer children). The table below, constructed from CBO data, shows what happened when.

In the CBO’s after-tax estimates, real median income rose 18.1% from 1992 to 2000 (thanks to the Internet and cellphone revolutions), but median income also grew by another 13.9 percent from 2000 to 2007. Comparing pretax and after-tax estimates shows the Bush tax cuts and refundable credits helped quite a lot, particularly in the crash from 2007 to 2009.

The CBO’s Gini coefficient (a broad measure of inequality) was 0.426 in 2009 – essentially unchanged from 0.424 in 1988. Like the strong 1992–2007 increase in real median income, the absence of any sustained upward trend in such broad measures of inequality is unlikely to be treated as newsworthy during an election year.

In late 2011, by contrast, the CBO grabbed a lot of media attention with a supposedly new report saying, “The share of income received by the top 1% grew … to over 17% in 2007.” In a Wall Street Journal article last December, I asked why the report stopped with the frothy cyclical peak of 2007, since I could easily calculate from IRS data that “the share of after-tax income of the top 1% by my estimate fell to 11.3% in 2009.” Now that the CBO has finally gotten around to releasing estimates for 2008 and 2009, it turns out that my estimate was almost exactly on the mark: the top 1 percent’s share of after-tax income fell to 11.5% in 2009.

Perhaps it is time for the CBO to issue a corrected report saying, “The share of income received by the top 1% fell from 11.8% in 1985 to 11.5% in 2009.”