Wearing O The Green - Road to the Middle Class

WHILE WE ARE celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, let us not forget to celebrate the Irish economy. Ever since its landmark economic reform the Irish economy has been showing a lot of green, and not just on St. Paddy’s Day.

The Irish economy doubled during the 1990s, with economic growth hitting 15 percent. Now growth is down to a modest 6 percent annual growth. And Ireland’s per capita GDP is $34,100, ahead of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.

How did it happen? Well, we supply-siders point to a simple fact. The keystone of the economic reform was a modest reduction in income tax rates and a cut in the corporate tax rate from 50 percent to 12.5 percent. It all started in 1989 “with economic reform, tax cuts, welfare reform, more competition and a ban on borrowing to fund current spending,” according to Wikipedia.

Hmm. 1989. Could the US tax cuts of 1981, introduced by Ronald Reagan, a son of Ireland, have inspired the Oirish?

In fact here are the tax cut numbers, as we published here in June 2005.

IRELAND TAX FACTS	1985	2002	% change
Top corporate tax rate	50%	12.5%	-75%
Top marginal income tax rate	60%	42%	-30%
Top capital gains tax	60%	20%	-67%

The Wall Street Journal has its own little feature today on Ireland’s booming economy. And the Tax Foundation moans that while Ireland booms along with its 12.5 percent corporate tax rate here in the US We're Number One in corporate taxes.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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