CLIVE CROOK

The idea that America is the best place in the world to start out poor, so long as you are willing to work hard, no longer seems to be true. One way of proving that is to ask how accurately your family's income when you were growing up predicted what your own would be. If the American dream were alive, your family's income would not predict your own that well…. Well, on that measure, America is now less the land of opportunity than France, than Germany, than Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The only other rich economy that the U.S. outscores in this respect is — you guessed it — the UK. Abolish the estate tax and America will be a serious contender for the bottom of the opportunity league.

The polarization of American politics is the proximate cause of the ongoing budget deficit…. Lately, the ideological center in Congress has thinned, and the distance between the parties has widened. Compromise has come to be seen as surrender—and the U. S. Government has all but come to a halt.

The beneficiaries of social spending in the developing countries are not the poor. First, more public spending of any sort means more public employment. Bureaucracies in developing countries do not give many jobs to the landless rural poor, to small street traders, to unskilled manual workers, or to the urban unemployed. They recruit from the middle classes, who are, therefore, the first to benefit from public spending.

Since the poor don’t vote, and the rich are too few to mention, the middle class chooses all by itself who runs the country.

Experience shows that high and unstable inflation can harm growth. A noninflationary macroeconomic policy is, therefore, a prerequisite for rapid development. Control of government borrowing is the crucial element in such a policy. When public borrowing is excessive, governments are soon obliged to finance it by printing money, and rising inflation then follows.

Trade agreements have always been greased about deception of who benefits. Now they are failing because leaders have come to believe their own lies.

The idea that the Third World lacks the spirit of enterprise is laughable. Peasant farmers who switch to another crop in response to a change in their government's marketing arrangements are entrepreneurs. So are the unregistered taxi and minibus operators who keep most Third World cities moving. So are street vendors, perambulating water vendors, money changers, and informal credit brokers. So are the growers of illegal crops such as coca, who in many countries are denied the opportunity of making a decent living by legal means. So are the smugglers of just about anything that do such a roaring trade across Africa's borders, profiting from the massive price distortions that government policies create.

The idea that America is the best place in the world to start out poor, so long as you are willing to work hard, no longer seems to be true. One way of proving that is to ask how accurately your family's income when you were growing up predicted what your own would be. If the American dream were alive, your family's income would not predict your own that well…. Well, on that measure, America is now less the land of opportunity than France, than Germany, than Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The only other rich economy that the U.S. outscores in this respect is — you guessed it — the UK. Abolish the estate tax and America will be a serious contender for the bottom of the opportunity league.

The idea that the Third World lacks the spirit of enterprise is laughable. Peasant farmers who switch to another crop in response to a change in their government's marketing arrangements are entrepreneurs. So are the unregistered taxi and minibus operators who keep most Third World cities moving. So are street vendors, perambulating water vendors, money changers, and informal credit brokers. So are the growers of illegal crops such as coca, who in many countries are denied the opportunity of making a decent living by legal means. So are the smugglers of just about anything that do such a roaring trade across Africa's borders, profiting from the massive price distortions that government policies create.

The beneficiaries of social spending in the developing countries are not the poor. First, more public spending of any sort means more public employment. Bureaucracies in developing countries do not give many jobs to the landless rural poor, to small street traders, to unskilled manual workers, or to the urban unemployed. They recruit from the middle classes, who are, therefore, the first to benefit from public spending.

Trade agreements have always been greased about deception of who benefits. Now they are failing because leaders have come to believe their own lies.

Since the poor don’t vote, and the rich are too few to mention, the middle class chooses all by itself who runs the country.

Experience shows that high and unstable inflation can harm growth. A noninflationary macroeconomic policy is, therefore, a prerequisite for rapid development. Control of government borrowing is the crucial element in such a policy. When public borrowing is excessive, governments are soon obliged to finance it by printing money, and rising inflation then follows.

The polarization of American politics is the proximate cause of the ongoing budget deficit…. Lately, the ideological center in Congress has thinned, and the distance between the parties has widened. Compromise has come to be seen as surrender—and the U. S. Government has all but come to a halt.