Is it April Fool’s Day? Has somebody in Paris hacked the website at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development? Have we been transported to a parallel dimension where up is down and black is white?

Please forgive all these questions. I’m trying to figure out why any organization—even a leftist bureaucracy such as the OECD—would send out a press release entitled, “Rising tax revenues: a key to economic development in Latin American countries.”

Not even Keynesians, after all, think higher taxes are a recipe for growth.

Ah, never mind. I just remembered that the OECD is a hotbed of statism, so the press release makes perfect sense. After all, the U.S.-taxpayer-funded organization has become infamous for reflexively advocating big government.

• The OECD has an anti-tax competition project designed to prop up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states.
• 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 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, as I explain in this video.
• The OECD even advocates higher taxes when nations are in the middle of economic crisis.

With this dismal track record, it’s hardly a surprise that the Paris-based bureaucracy is now pushing to undermine prosperity in Latin America. Here’s some of what the OECD said in its release.

Additional tax revenues enable governments to simultaneously improve their competitiveness and promote social cohesion through increased spending on education, infrastructure and innovation. Latin American countries have made great strides over the past two decades in raising tax revenues.

You won’t be surprised when I tell you that the Paris-based bureaucrats do not bother to provide even the tiniest shred of proof to support the silly claim that higher taxes improve competitiveness. But that shouldn’t be surprising since even Keynesians don’t believe something that absurd.

And the claim about social cohesion also is a bit of a stretch given the riots, chaos, and social disarray in many European nations.

The only accurate part of the passage is that Latin American nations have increased tax burdens over the past 20 years. To the tax-free bureaucrats at the OECD, that is making “great strides.”

Let’s see what else the OECD had to say.

Despite these improvements, significant gaps between Latin America and OECD countries remain. The average tax to GDP ratio in OECD countries is much higher than in Latin American countries (33.8% compared to 19.2% in 2009, respectively). As the countries in the region still find themselves in relatively strong economic conditions, now is the time to consider reforms that generate long-term, stable resources for governments to finance development.

Wow. The OECD is implying that Latin American nations should mimic OECD nations. In other words, the bureaucrats in Paris apparently think it makes sense to tell nations to copy the failed high-tax, welfare-state model of countries such as Greece, Italy, and Spain.

Is that really the lesson they think people should learn from recent fiscal history? Are they really so oblivious and/or blinded by ideology that they issued the release as these European nations are in the middle of a fiscal crisis?

To further demonstrate their bias, the folks at the OECD even acknowledged that the Latin American nations, with their less oppressive tax regimes, are enjoying “relatively strong economic conditions.” Normal people would therefore conclude that the failed high-tax European nation should copy Latin America on fiscal policy, not the other way around. But not the geniuses at the OECD.

Now that we’ve addressed the awful policy advice of the OECD, let’s take a moment to look at the real policy challenges facing Latin America.

The Fraser Institute, in cooperation with dozens of other research organizations around the world, produces every year a comprehensive survey measuring Economic Freedom of the World.

The report ranks 141 nations based on dozens of variables that are used to construct scores for five key measures of economic freedom. Of those five categories, the Latin nations have the highest average ranking on…you guessed it…fiscal policy.

Yet the OECD wants policies that will undermine the competitiveness of the Latin nations, hurting them in the area where they are doing a halfway decent job.

If the bureaucrats actually wanted to boost economic performance in Latin America, they would be pressuring those nations to make reforms in the two areas where the burden of government is most severe—legal structure/property rights and regulation.

But that would make sense, which is contrary to the OECD’s mission of promoting statism.

The only semi-positive thing to say about the OECD is that it is consistent. As this video explains, the Paris-based bureaucrats are advocating bigger government in the United States. And to add insult to injury, they’re using American tax dollars to push that agenda.

What a scam. Politicians from various nations send taxpayer money to Paris. The bureaucrats at the OECD then issue reports and studies saying the politicians in those countries should raise taxes and increase the burden of government. Everybody wins…except for taxpayers and the global economy.

Per dollar spent, OECD subsidies may be the most destructively wasteful part of the federal budget. And that says a lot.

Acting as the Typhoid Mary of the Global Economy, the OECD Urges Higher Taxes in Latin America is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Politicians in Europe have spent decades creating a fiscal crisis by violating Mitchell’s Golden Rule and letting government grow faster than the private sector.

As a result, government is far too big today, and nations such as Greece are in the process of fiscal collapse.

But that’s the good news — at least relatively speaking. Over the next few decades, the problems will get much worse because of demographic change and unsustainable promises to spend other people’s money.

(By the way, America will suffer the same fate in the absence of reforms.)

Here’s one stark indicator of why Greece is in the toilet.

Look at the skyrocketing number of people riding in the wagon of government dependency (and look at these cartoons to understand why this is so debilitating).

By the way, Greece’s population only increased by a bit more than 16 percent during this period. Yet the number of bureaucrats jumped by far more than 100 percent.

And don’t forget that this chart just looks at the number of bureaucrats, not their excessive pay and bloated pensions.

With this in mind, do you agree with President Obama and want to squander American tax dollars on a bailout for Greece?

Helping to Explain Greece’s Collapse in a Single Picture is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The showdown in Wisconsin has generated competing claims about whether state and local government bureaucrats are paid too much or paid too little compared to their private sector counterparts.

The data on total compensation clearly show a big advantage for state and local bureaucrats, largely because of lavish benefits (which is the problem that  Governor Walker in Wisconsin is trying to fix). But the government unions argue that any advantage they receive disappears after the data is adjusted for factors such as education.

This is a fair point, so we need to find some objective measure that neutralizes all the possible differences. Fortunately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and this “JOLTS” data includes a measure of how often workers voluntarily leave job, and we can examine this data for different parts of the workforce.

Every labor economist, right or left, will agree that higher “quit rates” are much more likely in sectors that are underpaid and lower levels are much more likely in sectors where compensation is generous.

Not surprisingly, this data shows state and local bureaucrats are living on Easy Street. As the chart illustrates, private sector workers are more than three times as likely to quit their jobs.

This helps explain why the unions are treating the Wisconsin debate as if it was Custer’s Last Stand. The bureaucrats know they have comfortable sinecures and they are fighting to preserve their unfair privileges.

The only bit of semi-good news for Wisconsin taxpayers is that state and local bureaucrats are not as lavishly over-compensated as federal bureaucrats.

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity video looks at all of the data and reveals a pecking order. Federal bureaucrats are at the kings and queens of compensation. State and local bureaucrats are like the nobility. And private sector taxpayers are the serfs that worker harder and earn less, but nonetheless finance the entire racket.

The video closes with a very important point that the right pay level for many bureaucrats is zero. This is because they work for programs, departments, and agencies that should not exist.

Everything You Need to Know about Whether State and Local Bureaucrats Are Over-Compensated, in One Chart is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Forbes looks at new data on household income in different metro areas:

Median family incomes across the country decreased dramatically from 2008 to 2009, and no region was left untouched by the recession. But despite shrinking paychecks nearly across the board, some cities still stand out for their bigger-than-average salaries.

To find the places where Americans earn the most, we looked at median family income data for 2009, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau. In September, as part of its annual American Community Survey, the Census released updated data for several hundred Metropolitan Statistical Areas — geographic entities defined by the U.S. government that roughly correspond to major cities.

The place with the highest median family income is the Washington, D.C., metro area, which includes the nation’s capital, as well as wealthy suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. In 2009 families in this region earned a median income of $102,340, a 0.7 percent increase from 2008. D.C. also boasts a better than average unemployment rate of 5.9 percent, far below the September’s 9.2 percent national average.

As we’ve reported here before, these trends began even before the Obama administration started concentrating job creation on the federal sector. In the middle of the Bush bubble, the Washington Post reported:

The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.

Rapidly growing Loudoun County has emerged as the wealthiest jurisdiction in the nation, with its households last year having a median income of more than $98,000. It is followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, with Montgomery County not far behind.

This of course reflects partly the high level of federal pay, as Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven have been detailing. And it also reflects the boom in lobbying as government comes to claim and redistribute more of the wealth produced in all those other metropolitan areas.

To slightly amend a ditty I posted a few years ago,

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,

Don’t let ‘em make software and sell people trucks,

Make ‘em be bureaucrats and lobbyists and such.

No Recession in Washington is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

While everyone is focused on the battle to see which party will control the House and/or Senate, there are several issues that voters will directly decide that deserve close attention. Here are nine initiatives that I’ll be watching next Tuesday.

1. Imposing an income tax in the state of Washington - This is the one I’ll be following very closely. I have a hard time thinking that voters would be dumb enough to impose an income tax, but the Pacific Northwest is a bit crazy on these issues. Oregon voters, for instance, approved higher tax rates earlier this year.

2. Stopping eminent domain abuse in Nevada - This initiative is very simple. It stops the state from seizing private property if the intent is to transfer it to a private party (thus shutting the door that was opened by the Supreme Court’s reprehensible Kelo decision).

3. Marijuana legalization in California - Proponents of a more sensible approach to victimless crimes will closely watch this initiative to see whether Golden State voters will say yes to pot legalization, subject to local regulation. (David Boaz and Juan Carlos Hidalgo already have commented on the implications of this vote)

4. Strengthen rights of gun owners in Kansas - If approved, this initiative would remove any ambiguity about whether individuals have the right to keep and bear arms.

5. Protecting health care freedom in Arizona - For all intents and purposes, this is a referendum on Obamacare. I’m hoping that it will pass overwhelmingly, thus giving a boost to the repeal campaign. There’s apparently a similar initiative in Oklahoma, but it hasn’t gotten as much attention.

6. Reducing benefits for bureaucrats in San Francisco - If one of the craziest, left-wing cities in America decides to require bureaucrats to make meaningful contributions to support their bloated pension and health benefits, that’s a sign that the gravy train may be in jeopardy for bureaucrats all across the nation.

7. Making it easier to increase government spending in California - The big spenders want to get rid of the two-thirds requirement in the state legislature to approve a budget. This would pave the way for even bigger government in a state that already is close to bankruptcy.

8. Reducing the sales tax in Massachusetts - The entire political establishment is fighting this proposal to roll back the sales tax from 6.25 percent to 3 percent, and pro-spending lobbies are pouring big money into a campaign against the initiative, so you know it must be a good idea.

9. Controlling benefits for bureaucrats in Louisiana - The initiative would require a two-thirds vote to approve any expansion of taxpayer-financed benefits for government employees.

Nine Key Ballot Initiatives to Watch is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Russia will cut its army of bureaucrats by more than 100,000 within the next three years, saving 43 billion rubles ($1.5 billion), Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Monday. “We assume more than 100,000 federal state civil jobs will be cut within three years. The government has already included a schedule for cutting the number of federal civil servants in the draft budget for the next three years and coordinated it with ministries and agencies,” Kudrin told President Dmitry Medvedev, who in June ordered a 20 percent cut in the number of bureaucrats. Under the government plan, ministries and agencies will have to sack five percent of their staff in 2011 and 2012, and 10 percent in 2013. …In the last three years, the number of bureaucrats in the federal government had increased by nearly 20,000, in regional governments by 60,000 and at municipalities by 50,000, he said.

Russian Government Announces 20 Percent Reduction in Number of Bureaucrats is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I sympathize with almost all taxpayers, but it’s difficult to feel sorry for government workers who get in trouble with the IRS. Compensation packages for federal bureaucrats are twice as lucrative as those for workers in the productive sector of the economy and their pensions are similarly extravagant. Yet they often can’t be bothered to fully pay their taxes, owing billions of dollars to the IRS according to a Washington Post report.

Among the biggest scofflaws are the folks at the Postal Service, who have accumulated more than $283 million of unpaid taxes. Retired bureaucrats, meanwhile, have amassed nearly $455 million of back taxes. Even tax collectors sometimes fall behind. Treasury Department bureaucrats owe $7.7 million. How hard can it be for them to walk down the hallway and cough up? Or do they think they’re exempt since their boss barely got a slap on the wrist after “forgetting” to declare $80,000?

The most startling part of the story, though, is the degree of tax dodging on Capitol Hill. Here’s an excerpt from the story:

Capitol Hill employees owed $9.3 million in overdue taxes at the end of last year…. The debt among Hill employees has risen at a faster rate than the overall tax debt on the government’s books, according to Internal Revenue Service data. …The IRS data… shows 638 employees, or about 4 percent, of the 18,000 Hill workers owe money, a slightly higher percentage than the 3 percent delinquency rate among all returns filed nationwide. …”If you’re on the federal payroll and you’re not paying your taxes, you should be fired,” [Congressman] Chaffetz said in an interview. He said the policy should apply across the board and “there should be no special exemptions.”

The shocking part about this blurb, at least to me, is not the 638 staffers who owe money to the IRS. It’s the fact that there are 18,000 bureaucrats working for Congress. Do 100 Senators and 435 Representatives really need that many attendants? How I long for the good ol’ days, when each politician had about two staffers. I suspect it’s no coincidence that the federal government was a much smaller burden back when there were far fewer staff.

Overpaid and Undertaxed is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Across the country, state legislatures have objected to, and outright rejected, the national ID and surveillance mandate imposed on them by the REAL ID Act. Passed in May 2005 with a compliance deadline three years later, the law has never been implemented. The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly threatened to deny air travel to people from the states refusing compliance, then backed down when states have not caved to its demands.

But state legislatures are one thing. State-level bureaucrats are quite another. And they are hedgehogging along, positioning their states to implement the national ID law.

Writes Alan Greenblatt in State Legislatures magazine:

In a number of states, motor vehicle departments are doing the behind-the-scenes work necessary to move closer to compliance, including updating computer systems, installing face-recognition software and setting up more secure card production rooms. . . . [E]very state is moving toward compliance. Even in the 14 states where legislatures have explicitly rejected REAL ID through laws or resolutions, some moves have been made in the direction of compliance.

Politicians come and go, but the bureaucrats are in it for life. And they can grow their portfolio be building a national ID.

State Bureaucrats Continuing to Advance REAL ID is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today’s Washington Post contains an article titled, “FDA Considers Revoking Approval of Avastin for Advanced Breast Cancer.”  An excerpt:

The debate over Avastin, prescribed to about 17,500 women with breast cancer a year, has become entangled in the politically explosive struggle over medical spending and effectiveness that flared during the battle over health-care reform: How should the government balance protecting patients and controlling costs without restricting access to cutting-edge, and often costly, treatments?

A better question is: why should the government be the one to strike that balance?  Why shouldn’t some women be able to sign up for a health plan that covers Avastin, while others are free to make a different choice?

Why Should Politicians and Bureaucrats Decide Whether Breast-Cancer Patients Can Take Avastin? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

“According to a new Regional Income Earnings Index developed by the Martin Prosperity Institute, Greater Washington, D.C. is the nation’s metropolitan region with the highest income,” writes Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class.

Washington, which produces rules, regulations, and political consulting services, ranks just ahead of San Jose and Stamford, Connecticut, where people invest their own money to produce software and allocate capital for a complex economy.

Even before the Obama administration started concentrating job creation on the federal sector, the Washington Post was reporting –

The three most prosperous large counties in the United States are in the Washington suburbs, according to census figures released yesterday, which show that the region has the second-highest income and the least poverty of any major metropolitan area in the country.

Rapidly growing Loudoun County has emerged as the wealthiest jurisdiction in the nation, with its households last year having a median income of more than $98,000. It is followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, with Montgomery County not far behind.

This of course reflects partly the high level of federal pay, as Chris Edwards has been detailing. And it also reflects the boom in lobbying as government comes to claim and redistribute more of the wealth produced in all those other metropolitan areas.

To slightly amend a ditty I posted a few years ago,

Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,

Don’t let ‘em make software and sell people trucks,

Make ‘em be bureaucrats and lobbyists and such.

It’s Summer in Washington and the Livin’ Is Good is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

That’s the name of the website of Jack Dean, who is interviewed in this new Reason.tv video about how excessive pension promises to bureaucrats are creating a fiscal nightmare for state and local governments.

The Pension Tsunami is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I gave a speech in Hungary about two weeks ago and now the government has announced a big step in the direction of better fiscal policy. My role was about as meaningful as the rooster crowing, followed by the sunrise, but this is still good news. According to Reuters, “Hungary’s new government plans to introduce a flat personal income tax of 16 percent from 2011, as well as a 15 percent cut in public sector wages.” Those are the headline initiatives, but the fiscal reform package includes other good policies. Here’s a blurb from The Economist.

After a three-day emergency cabinet meeting over the weekend, Viktor Orban, the prime minister, announced the government’s new economic programme this afternoon. The battered forint quickly jumped almost 2% in response. …The introduction of a 16% flat personal income tax is a daring move, and could have important repercussions beyond balancing the state’s books. Unemployment, or at least that element of it which is declared, is nudging 12%, and one reason is Hungary’s cumbersome bureacracy and heavy tax burden. Now Mr Orban has announced that corporation tax for companies with annual profits of less than 500m forints will be reduced from 19% to 10%. Ten more small and bothersome taxes are set to be abolished altogether.

A few years ago, when several nations each year were adopting the flat tax, I arbitrarily decided that this rock classic would be the theme song of the tax reform movement. Sadly, it doesn’t look like we’ll get to play it in America anytime soon.

Dan Mitchell Gets Results is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The political process often resembles an unseemly racket as politicians take money from people who earn it and give it to another group in exchange for campaign cash and political support. The modern bureaucracy is a good example. Government workers have now become a cosseted elite, with generous pay, extravagant benefits, lavish pensions, and ironclad job security. In exchange for this privileged status, they reward the politicians with millions of dollars of support and a host of in-kind contributions.  I have documented many of these outrages in my “Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats” series at the International Liberty blog. Well, now we have a video detailing how the government workforce has morphed into a fiscal nightmare for taxpayers.

There are three things in the video that deserve special emphasis. First, bureaucrats are vastly overpaid. The government data cited in the video show that total compensation for the federal civil service is twice as high, on average, as it is for workers in the productive sector of the economy. There are some bureaucrats who deserve above-average pay, such as scientists dealing with nuclear weapons, but it is outrageous that the average drone in the federal bureaucracy is getting twice as much compensation as the taxpayers (serfs) who pay their salaries.

Second, this mini-documentary debunks the silly argument (put forth by government employee unions, of course) that bureaucrats are underpaid compared to the private sector. The Department of Labor has data looking at voluntary departure rates by profession. If government workers were being underpaid, you would expect them to be more likely to leave their jobs in order to take new positions in the (supposedly higher paid) private sector. Instead, the video reveals that people in the private sector are six times more likely to switch jobs than federal bureaucrats.

Third, the video concludes with the essential point that most federal bureaucrats should be paid nothing because they work for departments and agencies that should not exist.

Last but not least, Chris Edwards deserves special mention. Much of the material in this video came from his work on this issue.

Bureaucrats vs. Taxpayers is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

One of the justifications members of Congress offer for earmarking is that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the “power of the purse.” Congressional earmarkers often denigrate the executive branch’s inability to effectively allocate funds. But just because the federal bureaucracy does an abysmal job of spending taxpayer money, it doesn’t mean lawmakers would do any better.

The following example out of Florida illustrates why lawmakers are just as likely as bureaucrats to misspend taxpayer money. According to the St. Petersburg Times, a developer who has never had a successful project was able to convince four members of Florida’s congressional delegation into supporting a $500,000 earmark for a Tampa affordable housing project. The developer had already wasted $563,000 in federal and state taxpayer funds on housing projects that now “sit vacant and rotting.”

According to the article, suckering more money out of Congress was apparently pretty easy:

But the federal earmark process involves little vetting of recipients. So the four members of Congress didn’t know that Foster had never successfully completed a housing project. They didn’t know he exaggerated the involvement of his partners in the proposal he presented to them. They didn’t know he has a record of mishandling grants for much less ambitious projects. And they didn’t know his nonprofit has faced legal troubles, including IRS liens for unpaid payroll taxes.

The lawmakers, who represent Florida and the Tampa Bay area, say they made their decision based largely on information provided by Foster. Others say he never should have gotten a cent.

“I am flabbergasted that this guy’s getting another $500,000. That’s just insane,” said Craig Rothburd, an attorney working pro bono for the Hillsborough County Homeless Coalition. The coalition directed a $400,000 state grant to Foster to develop housing for homeless people. It is now suing Foster for fraud and breach of contract.

Might these lawmakers have put a wee bit more effort into scrutinizing the developer had the money been their own?

Regardless of whether federal funds are allocated by the bureaucracy or earmarked by politicians, both are spending other people’s money. Neither has the incentive to conduct the due diligence necessary to ensure that the money is properly spent. This is one reason why the federal government’s “affordable housing” efforts have been a failure.

Therefore, the question of whether the executive or legislative branch should have more control over spending is a secondary concern. The primary focus should be on efforts to restrict the government’s activities to the small number defined in the Constitution.

Earmarkers vs. Bureaucrats: Taxpayers Lose Either Way is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

This morning the Obama Administration officially released its proposal for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka, No Child Left Behind). The proposal is a mixed bag, and still one with a gaping hole in the bottom.

Among some generally positive things, the proposal would eliminate NCLB’s ridiculous annual-yearly-progress and “proficiency” requirements, which have driven states to constantly change standards and tests to avoid having to help students achieve real proficiency.  It would also end many of the myriad, wasteful categorical programs that infest the ESEA, though it’s a pipedream to think members of Congress will actually give up all of their pet, vote-buying programs.

On the negative side of the register, the proposed reauthorization would force all states to either sign onto national mathematics and language-arts standards, or get a state college to certify their standards as “college and career ready.”  It would also set a goal of all students being college and career ready by 2020. But setting a single, national standard makes no logical sense because all kids have different needs and abilities; no one curriculum will ever optimally serve but a tiny minority of students.

Also, on the (VERY) negative side of the register, Obama’s budget proposal would increase ESEA spending by $3 billion from last year — for a total of $28.1 billion — to pay for all of the ESEA reauthorization’s promises of incentives and rewards. That’s $3 billion more that the utterly irresponsible spenders in Washington simply do not have, and that would do nothing to improve outcomes.

Even if this proposal were loaded with nothing but smart, tough ideas, it would ultimately fail for the same reason that top-down control of government schools has failed for decades. Teachers, administrators, and education bureaucrats make their livelihoods from public schooling, and hence spend more time and money on education lobbying and politicking than anyone else. That makes them by far the most powerful forces in public schooling, and what they want for themselves is what we’d all want in their place if we could get it: lots of money and no accountability to anyone.

As long as such asymmetrical power distribution is the case — and it’s inherent to “democratic” control of education — no proposal, no matter how initially tough, is likely to make any long-term improvements. As the matrix below lays out, no matter what combination of standards and accountability you have, politics will eventually lead to poor outcomes. It’s a major reason that the history of government schooling is strewn with “get-tough” laws that ultimately spend lots of money but produce no meaningful improvements, and it’s a powerful argument for the feds complying with the Constitution and getting out of education.

When all is said and done, you can throw all the great things you want into the federal education bag, but as long as politicians are making the decisions you’ll always come up empty.

Obama’s Education Proposal Still a Bottomless Bag is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Fiscal crises have a predictable pattern.

Step 1 occurs when the economy is prospering and tax revenues are growing faster than forecast.

Step 2 is when politicians use the additional money to increase government spending.

Step 3 is that politicians do not treat the extra tax revenue like a temporary windfall and budget accordingly.Instead, they adopt policies – more entitlements, more bureaucrats – that permanently expand the burden of the public sector.

Step 4 occurs when the economy stumbles (in part because more resources are being diverted from the productive sector to the government) and tax revenues stagnate. If the resulting fiscal gap is large enough, as it is in places such as Greece and California, a crisis atmosphere is created.

Step 5 takes place when politicians solemnly proclaim that “tough measures” are necessary, but very rarely does that mean a reversal of the policies that caused the mess. Instead, the result in higher taxes.

Greece is now at this stage. I’ve already argued that perhaps bankruptcy is the best option for Greece, and I showed the data proving that Greece has a too-much-spending crisis rather than a too-little-revenue crisis. I’ve also commented elsewhere about the feckless behavior of Greek politicians. Sadly, it looks like things are getting even worse. The government has announced a huge increase in the value-added tax, pushing this European version of a national sales tax up to 21 percent. On the spending side of the ledger, though, the government is only proposing to reduce bonuses that are automatically given to bureaucrats three times per year. Here’s an excerpt from the Associated Press report, including a typically hysterical responses from a Greek interest group:

Government officials said the measures would include cuts in civil servant’s annual pay through reducing their Easter, Christmas and vacation bonuses by 30 percent each, and a 2 percentage point increase in sales tax to bring it to 21 percent from the current 19 percent. …One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the official announcement, said…that “we have exhausted our limits.” …”It is a very difficult day for us … These cuts will take us to the brink,” said Panayiotis Vavouyious, the head of the retired civil servants’ association.

Now, time for some predictions. It is unlikely that higher taxes and cosmetic spending restraint will solve Greece’s fiscal problem. Strong global growth would make a difference, but that also seems doubtful. So Greece will probably move to Step 6, which is a bailout, though it is unclear whether the money will come from other European nations, the European Commission, and/or the European Central Bank.

Step 7 is when politicians in nations such as Spain and Italy decide that financing spending (i.e., buying votes) with money from German and Dutch taxpayers is a swell idea, so they continue their profligate fiscal policies in order to become eligible for bailouts. Step 8 is when there is no more bailout money in Europe and the IMF (i.e., American taxpayers) ride to the rescue. Step 9 occurs when the United States faces a fiscal criss because of too much spending.

For Step 10, read Atlas Shrugged.

Lessons from the Greek Budget Debacle is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

President Obama has announced his intention to use $30 billion in TARP funds to create a new small business lending fund.  In all likelihood, this is $30 billion the taxpayers will never see returned.

First of all, the problem facing small business, outside of the massive uncertainty being created by Washington, is one of credit availability, not cost.  For those who can get credit, its quite cheap, arguably too cheap.  So if the president doesn’t intend to lower the cost of credit, the plan must be to lower the quality; using the $30 billion to cover expected credit losses.  Of course, we tried throwing lots of taxpayer money at unsustainable homeownership, is there any reason to believe throwing taxpayer money at unsustainable businesses is going to work any better?

Using TARP funds for this program is also somewhat disingenuous.  This program adds $30 billion to the deficit regardless of whether it’s funded by TARP or by Congressional appropriations.  Taking from the TARP only allows the President to keep treating the TARP as his personal slush fund.  Nowhere in the TARP legislation can you find language authorizing the use of funds to cover credit losses on new loans.  Being a constitutional scholar, the President should know very well that the spending power rests with Congress, not the President.  If we are to have a new small business lending program, it should be designed and funded by Congress, not bureaucrats at the Treasury Department.

Historically the two main sources of small business start-up funding have been home equity and credit cards.  Clearly the availability of home equity has declined.  Sadly as well, with the passing of credit card “reform” the availability of credit card lending has also declined.  If the President truly wants to help small business, then the first thing to do is ask Congress to repeal the credit card bill and then just get out of the way.

Obama Small Business Lending Fund Likely A Bust is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The picture below, taken from a story in The Economist, shows that France, Germany, and Italy are among the nations with the most central bank employees (as a share of the population). In some sense, this is a dog-bites-man factoid. After all, is anyone surprised that Europe’s major welfare states have bloated public payrolls? But there’s more to this story. All three of these central banks ceased to have a monetary policy, starting back in 2002, when their nations adopted the euro. The mission is gone, but the bureaucracy lives on.

To be fair, the bureaucrats in these nations presumably are not sitting in quiet rooms playing minesweeper. Perhaps these central banks are responsible for other functions, such as financial regulation. Of course, given how governments around the world pursued policies that led to a financial crisis, perhaps all of us would be better off if bureaucrats did play computer games all day.

Great Moments in Bureaucracy is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There’s been a lot of attention given to overpaid government workers in America, as many people have documented, but the problem is global. Bureaucrats who work for the European Union get lavish pay and benefits, yet are threatening to strike because of a proposed pay freeze. These mandarins already pay reduced taxes, get a host of special allowances, and even have the gall to demand free travel on public transport. Interestingly, as this story for Euractiv.com indicates, they apparently realize they have privileged positions and are worried that the current controversy may spark some resentment from over-burdened taxpayers:

Staff at the European institutions are preparing to go on strike next week in a bitter pay dispute sparked by national governments’ decision to block a routine salary increase for EU civil servants. Civil service staff are due to receive a 3.7% pay hike… There is widespread acceptance that the pay rise is legally binding but other options are currently under consideration – much to the chagrin of unions. Diplomatic sources indicated it may be possible to proceed with the 3.7% pay rise, but to initiate a parallel move which would effectively negate the increase. This could include increasing the so-called ‘crisis levy’, which allows European civil servants to be taxed in exceptional circumstances.  …Diplomats said some EU civil servants are concerned that the dispute could open a can of worms if the spotlight is turned on their generous pay and benefits, including the permanent repatriation allowance paid to civil servants – even if they have been in Brussels for 30 years.

Pampered European Bureaucrats Threaten Strike is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Andrew Coulson has already touched on this, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents. “Race to the Top Fund” guidelines were released today and they should please no reformers. They are simultaneously too weak, and way too much.

They are too weak because they don’t require states to actually do anything of substance. Have plans for reform? Sure. Break down a few barriers that could stand in the way of decent changes? That’s in there, too. But that’s about it. And the money is supposed to be a one-shot deal – once paper promises are accepted and the dough delivered, the race is supposed to be over.

In light of those things, how is this more appropriately labeled the Over the Top Fund than the Race to the Top Fund? Because while not requiring anything, it tries to push unprecedented centralization of education power.It calls for state data systems to track students from preschool to college graduation. It calls for states to sign onto “common” – meaning, ultimately, federal – standards. It tries to influence state budgeting.

In other words, it attempts to further centralize power in the hands of ever-more distant, unaccountable bureaucrats rather than leaving it with the communities, and especially parents, the schools are supposed to serve — exactly what’s plagued American education for decades. And, of course, it does this with huge  gobs of federal money taxpayers have no choice but to supply.

More on ‘Race to the Top’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog