United States
How surveys twist rankings on health care
IPN Opinion article
Proponents of nationalised healthcare systems frequently refer to the WHO ranking the US system a lowly 37th in the world. Yet how reliable are these rankings? Glen Whitman reveals their faults and underlying, ideological bias.
International Tax Competition: A 21st Century Restraint on Government
IPN Opinion article
"Defensive responses to tax competition are a dead end. They do nothing to promote economic growth or reform inefficient tax systems. A more constructive response to tax competition would be to learn from foreign reforms and adopt pro-growth tax policies at home. The United States should be a leader but has fallen behind on tax reform. For example, the United States now has one of the highest corporate tax rates among major nations. The chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, Glenn Hubbard, believes that "from an income tax perspective, the United States has become one of the least attractive industrial countries in which to locate the headquarters of a multinational corporation."
European Union Tax Cartel Is Bad for U.S. Economy
IPN Opinion article
Because it is increasingly easy for investment funds to cross national borders, politicians must exercise a degree of fiscal discipline to attract jobs, capital, and entrepreneurs instead of losing them to another country. This is known as "tax competition" and the United States is the world's biggest winner of this process.
America's modest tax burden, combined with privacy laws for foreigners seeking to escape oppressive fiscal systems, has helped attract more that $9 trillion of foreign investments to the U.S. economy. That inflow is a key source of American prosperity because that money is put to work for the nation and produces more jobs, higher standards of living and general prosperity.
Bermuda Straight
IPN Opinion article
People and corporations should be free to move... Americans and companies are moving abroad because of an overly aggressive and unfair tax policy in the United States. Tax rates are too high ó the U.S. corporate income tax is the fourth highest rate of all OECD countries ó and should be reduced. Today, U.S. firms have to pay U.S. taxes on money earned in foreign countries, even though the countries in question have already taxed it. This "worldwide" system of taxing corporate income is very anti-competitive. It provides companies with an incentive to give up their U.S. charters and instead become foreign-based companies.
Oxfam is full of beans
IPN Opinion article
To round out the stereotype, Oxfam\'s campaign is calling for governments to spend up to $100 million to destroy \"surplus\" coffee and prop up prices, and wants the International Coffee Organization to force multinationals to abide by \"fair trade\" coffee standards. Yep, Oxfam wants taxpayers to cough up in order to pay more to drink coffee...
Far from the intended consequences, government intervention and \"fair trade\" standards would only worsen the problem for coffee farmers, however. Though it is trendy to blame multinationals for every ill, the real problems that poor farmers face are caused by a lack of infrastructure, distorted EU and U.S. agricultural markets and unheeded economic signals. [For WSJ subscribers http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1033601496319159033.djm,00.html]
