SOME ECONOMICS

Germany will not face the fact that German laws have priced Germans out of work: "The number of people out of work in Europe's largest economy has risen for the tenth straight month as growth remains stubbornly slow. German unemployment rose 7,000 in November to 4.464 million people, or 10.8% of the workforce.... With unemployment stuck above 4 million for years, the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has put job creation at the top of the agenda. A controversial package of measures to shake up incentives to get back to work, paid for by cutting some cherished benefits, has sparked anger among some German workers.... Among the new initiatives are the so-called "one-euro jobs" which top up unemployment benefit.... "The deterioration of the labour market does not come as a surprise," said Isabelle Kronawitter at Hypovereinsbank. "Job creation measures probably prevented a stronger increase in the seasonally adjusted numbers."" [German workers now get so many government-dictated benefits that it is prohibitive to employ them. For comparison, deregulation of the labour market in Australia has just led to record LOW unemployment]. (Link via Reliapundit)

End corporate income tax: "On Nov. 18, in a speech given at the Finance Ministry in Vienna, Austria, the very highly regarded European economist and first woman president of the Mont Pelerin Society, Professor Victoria Curzon Price, called for eliminating the corporate income tax. There, in the center of socialist Europe, was not only the call to get rid of this destructive tax, but almost everyone in an audience of economists, various government finance officials and public policy experts appeared to agree with her. The idea and practice of the corporate income tax has been dying slowly for the last two decades. The corporate income tax is a highly destructive tax that greatly distorts proper economic decision-making, taxes the same income more than once, is endlessly complex, and provides a declining share of tax revenue in most countries." [Double-taxing of company profits was abolished long ago in Australia -- by a LEFTIST government! And I have just received a big refund cheque to prove it!]

Tough row to hoe: "When Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns, whom President Bush has just nominated as the next agriculture secretary, takes office, his first order of business should to push for an end to America's drastically distorted farm subsidy programs. Eliminating U.S. farm subsidies would dramatically reduce government spending, end a program that mostly benefits corporate interests and the wealthy, strengthen U.S. agriculture, give us much needed leverage in international trade negotiations, and allow the United States to extricate itself from embarrassingly undermining its own foreign aid program."

The Chinese are coming!: "Until recently, the Chinese have taken the boatloads of dollars we sent them and recycled them into Treasury bonds. Now Chinese companies are investing some of those greenbacks into something more productive: companies and businesses. Here in the United States, we're schooled to think of foreign direct investment -- a vital component of global capital flows -- as going from the First World into the Third. Now the river is running in the opposite direction. These American businesses, some of them bankrupt or on the verge of abandonment, are getting dynamic new parent companies. It's just another step in the continued seamless integration of the world's economy. Man, globalism is cool!"

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