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My friend Tom Emerson, who heads the entrepreneurship program at Carnegie Mellon University, brought to my attention yesterday’s opinion piece in the New York Times by Thomas L. Friedman. Mr. Friedman, a man who often expresses common-sense economic views (despite his worship at the secular religious altar of socialism), penned an article titled “The End of the Rainbow.” He writes:
“Here’s something you probably didn’t know: Ireland today is the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg....In a quite unusual development, the government, the main trade unions, farmers and industrialists came together and agreed on a program of fiscal austerity, slashing corporate taxes to 12.5 percent, far below the rest of Europe, moderating wages and prices, and aggressively courting foreign investment. In 1996, Ireland made college education basically free, creating an even more educated work force.
“The results have been phenomenal. Today, 9 out of 10 of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies have operations here, as do 16 of the top 20 medical device companies and 7 out of the top 10 software designers. Last year, Ireland got more foreign direct investment from America than from China. And overall government tax receipts are way up.”
If Mr. Freidman could maintain the same clarity of perception upon returning to the socialist enclave of the New York Times editorial board, presumably he would agree with what I wrote in Eminent Domain: Random Thoughts:
“Cities like Utica and New London, Connecticut, the subject of the Supreme Court decision, are in trouble, not because of lack of urban planning, but because of high taxes, excessive regulation, and a generally anti-business, socialistic public policy. What they need is fewer labor unions and fewer liberal-socialist citizens who have become addicted to massive, and ferociously expensive, public welfare programs that run the gamut from money thrown unaccountably down the rat hole of public education (read teachers’ union perks), to mandatory, all-inclusive insurance benefits to workers. In short, ongoing operating costs are just as important in determining business locations as their land costs.
“... Residents of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and other Eastern socialistic states complain that they send more tax dollars to Washington than come back as benefit programs. The way to deal with that is not to pay subsidies to companies like Pfizer by acquiring land for them, but to stop electing people like Teddy Kennedy and Christopher Dodd.”
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