http://news.investors.com/ibd-edito...ax-rates-keeping-irish-economy-prosperous.htm
Europe: Irish rock star Bono is taking a truckload of abuse from Ireland's unions for stating the obvious: that low tax rates have brought Ireland "the only prosperity it has ever known." Guess who's the scholar in this exchange?
Ireland has found itself the center of controversy in Europe these days, because of the tangled tax regimes of its states that have given Ireland the opportunity to outcompete other states through low corporate taxes and give companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and others a 12.5% tax rate, well below the European average and lower than even the United Kingdom's 21% rate. (The U.S. rate is around 33%.)
Bono stepped up to the plate for the country he still lives in and pointed out the hardscrabble reality of Ireland: that "tax competitiveness has brought our country the only prosperity it's ever known."
The comment provoked an attack from Unite, an Irish Big Labor union. "The one in four who suffer deprivation as well as the tens of thousands of others who have to put up with austerity will regard Bono's remarks with total derision," declared Mike Taft, Unite's economist, in an interview with the U.K. Guardian.
Apparently, Taft's logic is that Ireland should be raising more in taxes so that more welfare can be dished out to those without jobs and "austerity" will never cut into the Eurocrats' six-hour lunches.
It's garbage. Bono is the one who knows what's going on, and they should too.
Fact is, Ireland's history is one of relentless, grinding poverty that has lasted millennia. It wasn't just the result of British rule; its own high spending, oppressive laws, overbearing unions, cronyism and contentious governability problems, have kept the country poor even after its 1922 independence and raised questions about whether independence was worth it, as David J. Lynch wrote in "When the Luck Of The Irish Ran Out."
Ireland was only lifted in the 1980s and 1990s by the free-market revolution that swept the world, with low taxes as a key element in turning stagnant economies into economic dynamos from Chile to Singapore to Israel — and to what came to be known as the Celtic Tiger.
Bono not only knows what helped make his country great, he hasn't forgotten it.
Lower taxes are one of the few ways a tiny country like Ireland, subject to economic buffeting from Europe's larger players, can defend itself. Lower taxes make sense. What doesn't make sense is that anyone would criticize them.
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