There is tax competition between states and countries,
but the effect in distorting tax structures is much
more important, IMO, than the impact on the size of
government. There is pressure on the size of Gov,
but it stems from ideological and (anti-)redistributive
concerns, not very much from actual competitive pressure.
There is the conservative notion that devolution will
cause the public sector to shrink, but so far this has
not happened, in the U.S. at least.
mbs
((((((((
CB: What is competitive austerity ? Is it competition between governments to
see who can cut social spending and public enterprise the most ? Is the
difference between this and the 1930 situation that there weren't welfare
state institutions as much in place then as in the period out of which
competitive austerity is taking us now ?
(((((
It's important to realize that in my full story of the origins of the Great
Depression (http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/depr/Depr.html.), the
H-S tariff plays only a small role. (It's sort of like Jar Jar's role in
Star Wars Episode I: bad but ultimately unimportant. When I see the Jar
Jar-free version of SW Ep I, I'm sure it will be just as bad as the
original.) Further, it was a _product_ of an international political
economy centering on aggressive nation-state-to-nation-state competition of
a sort we don't see in the rich capitalist world these days. It also hit a
world economy that was ready to fall. It should also remembered that the
early-1920s US tariff _promoted_ US prosperity, unlike H-S. Back then, BTW,
it was Republicans, not Democrats, who liked tariffs. Protection was the
main Republican activist economic policy.
((((((
CB: Would Bush be going back to the old Republican trend if he protects the
U.S. steel industry ?
(((((((
I'm not big into protectionism: it can create jobs in one country by taking
jobs away from workers in another. Or -- in the VERY exceptional case of a
H-S tariff -- it can destroy jobs for both.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
