I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This Paris-based international bureaucracy doesn’t get as much attention as the United Nations or International Monetary Fund, but it’s probably does more damage to freedom and prosperity if measured on a per-dollar-spent basis.
For instance:
- The OECD, in an effort to promote redistributionism, has concocted absurdly misleading statistics claiming that there is more poverty in the US than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, or Turkey.
- The OECD is pushing a “Multilateral Convention” that is designed to become something akin to a World Tax Organization, with the power to persecute nations with free-market tax policy.
- The OECD has endorsed Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”
But now I’ve come across something that is bizarrely reprehensible. The bureaucrats in Paris are allying themselves with the cranks, buffoons, and totalitarians from the so-called Occupy movement.
In the bureaucracy’s quarterly magazine, the OECD Observer, one of the Occupy clowns was given a platform to promote more statism. The poorly written article is mostly filled with empty clichés and “change” and “challenges,” but it does specifically embrace the OECD’s anti-tax competition project as a tool to promote higher taxes and more redistributionism.
In OECD member countries, a grassroots movement has manifested itself in the overnight occupation of public space and the exercise of direct democracy… The first lesson to draw from Occupy is that civil society has the scope to be a dynamic force for change. …In London these efforts produced statements on corporations, economics, the environment and local government within weeks. …We all know that we face profound challenges in the way we organise our economies, our societies and our government. …There’s a reason why “We are the 99%” has become such a rallying cry. There are external threats to democratic governance too, and some of these may need to be tackled anew on an international scale. Tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions bring governments into a harmful race to the bottom that is against their population’s interests. They are a major driver of inequality, which we know correlates to poor health and social outcomes. The OECD has played an important role in drawing policymakers’ attention to these issues, but those efforts now need to be stepped up.
If you want the specific arguments about why tax competition and tax havens are desirable, I urge you to peruse the work of Allister Heath and Pierre Bessard.
The main purpose of this post, though, is to ask why American taxpayers are sending about $100 million each year to Paris to subsidize the OECD’s left-wing agenda? This video has more details.
Here are a few additional blurbs about OECD activities that are being financed with your tax dollars.
- The OECD has an anti-tax competition project designed to prop up Europe’s bankrupt welfare states.
- The OECD pulled off a hat trick of bad policy in a 2010 document, promoting a value-added tax, Obama’s global warming agenda, and failed Keynesian stimulus.
- The OECD endorsed Obamacare policies, as I explain in this video.
- The OECD even advocates higher taxes when nations are in the middle of economic crisis.
- The OECD also is pushing for higher taxes in Latin America, based on the odd notion that those nations should copy Europe’s failed welfare states.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but funding the OECD is the international version of subsidizing ACORN. A way for the left to use our money to push their agenda.
Which is why I’ve argued that the GOP – if it is serious about its claim of fiscal responsibility – should immediately end handouts for the Paris-based bureaucrats.
