Thursday, July 30, 2009

Analysis that would cross a rabbi's eyes

National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews George Gilder about Israel --

Netanyahu is the Churchill of this epoch

There's more --

In centuries to come, the idea that CO2 is a pollutant will represent the summit of political idiocy.

But his main argument is that modern Israel represents a hyper-capitalist state, a state which got a trial run in the management of the occupied territories in the 1970s and 1980s (free from pesky regulations and all that good stuff) --

Under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is the world’s ascendant capitalist country. While the U.S. is immersed in a slough of increasing taxes and regulations, Israel has been privatizing its companies and deregulating its financial institutions. They are reducing tax rates and preserving the key capitalist assets of the West while the U.S. is trying to cap and trade capitalism, suppress energy production, and raise tax rates on everything. As rates rise above 50 percent, entrepreneurs have a greater incentive to shuffle and hide existing wealth than to create new wealth.

Sadly, none of his claims about taxation stand up to a consultation of actual Israeli news sources. In fact, as these Ha'aretz articles explain, Bibi is making a dog's dinner of the tax system, increasing the lower rates and payroll taxes all in a quest to be able to tell people like Gilder that he's on the road to cutting the top rate of income tax to 39 percent. No wonder Bibi and George Bush got on so well.

Some background on George Gilder

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