An essential component of a free society is independent press. It plays a central role in preventing both state actors and private interest groups from pursuing their own interests through state power too aggressively. Journalists independent from political and economic power work effectively through two main channels: detecting and uncovering actual offenses, and safeguarding against further offenses. Interestingly, free press does not have to be crowded out by state-run pseudo-tax paid channels.
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The best way how rich countries can help the poorer ones has always been to teach them how to fish. Not giving them fish. And certainly not taking fish away from them.
Yet this is what the EU has been doing since the 1970s, and in September it has renewed three multi-year greatly underpriced leases of fishing grounds off Africa, to the detriment of poor African fishermen and for the benefit of rich European ones.
This is wrong and there are better alternatives.
Germany Income per capita is not only high in Germany, it is also relatively equally distributed in the population. OECD data indicate that only a few small countries have income both higher and more equally distributed than Germany. In other large European countries like France, UK, Italy or Spain, income is lower (on average) and more unequally distributed. This international comparison suggests that higher income does not have to result in higher inequality. A contributing factor to this could be that state institutions of a higher quality can positively influence not only the wealth of a nation, but also redistribute it during slow growth.
“Fair tax(es)” is a beautiful idea everybody wants to subscribe to. Including, of course, modern EU politicians. Their idea of “fair tax”, however, differs very much from the way in which people understood the concept in the past.
It is no longer about making sure the tax is fair to the taxpayer. It is much more about making sure that the taxpayer pays “her fair share”, meaning “enough”.
This is a dangerous development.
It is good when foreigners buy agricultural land. Johnny Foreigner will have evidentnly paid more than anyone else, and he can bring access to better capital, technology, know-how or marketing channels. That’s what the single market is for.
Yet governments fear him and legalise against him – like the Slovak government recently (and many others). Some see it as a protection for domestic landowners, but in reality it is subsidies that rule European agriculture. They seep through to landowners, and Johnny likes that. Reduce them, and Johnny won’t be so eager to come.
A new study from a German economics institute claims that the German state has already made €100bn from the Greek crisis as lenders flee from Greece into the safe haven…
Each employed Slovak worker will pay about a week’s take-home pay in extra taxes so that their government can bribe Jaguar into creating a few jobs located in Slovakia (for a while). We present lessons this teaches us, one for each day of such week.
Economists are often accused (especially by other disciplines) of exaggerating the virtues of the market and of systematically downplaying the chances of a successful government intervention. In this view, economists are “market believers” and “state sceptics”, which is then reflected not only in research, but also in teaching and policy advice.
It is true that economists deal with the causes and consequences of state failure more intensively than other social scientists. Economic analysis of government failure has become an important research program over the course of the second half of 20th century.
Nevertheless, the label of unilateral market orthodoxy does not really stick. A look at the ngram statistic (courtesy of Google’s digitization project) reveals that the term “market failure” appears in the literature much more frequently than “government failure”. Given the prominent role played by the state in our economic system, it is apt to ask: Why is government failure so little discussed?
The imagination of EU governments to come up with new kinds of tax is apparently inexhaustible. Tax on meat is now being prepared, as an answer to alleged “problems” with meat production and consumption. But taxes are generally bad solutions to “problems”, especially when those problems are created by other government activities.
It’s not just USA who is raising minimum wages significantly. New or increased minimum wages are spreading all across the EU, too (e.g. Germany, UK, Portugal..). If we take McDonald’s as a symbol of “minimum wage jobs”, which governments are working the hardest to deprive such workers of any job at all?