The International Monetary Fund is infamous for its advocacy of higher taxes.
Heck, it’s not merely advocacy. The international bureaucracy uses bailout money as a tool to coerce politicians into approving higher tax burdens.
This is so reprehensible that I’ve referred to the IMF as the “Dumpster Fire of the Global Economy” and called it the “Doctor Kevorkian of Global Economic Policy.”
The bureaucrats also are quite inventive when it comes to rationalizing tax increases.
For instance, a new report from the IMF suggests that a minimum tax level is critical for achieving rapid growth and development.
Is there a minimum tax to GDP ratio associated with a significant acceleration in the process of growth and development? We give an empirical answer to this question by investigating the existence of a tipping point in tax-to-GDP levels.
We use two separate databases: a novel contemporary database covering 139 countries from 1965 to 2011 and a historical database for 30 advanced economies from1800 to 1980. We find that the answer to the question is yes. Estimated tipping points are similar at about 12¾ percent of GDP. For the contemporary dataset we find that a country just above the threshold will have GDP per capita 7.5 percent larger, after10 years. The effect is tightly estimated and economically large.
Here’s a depiction of the IMF’s perspective.
At some level, there is a correlation between prosperity and taxation. For instance, some poor nations in the developing world are so corrupt and incompetent that they are incapable of collecting much tax revenue.
But that doesn’t mean higher taxes would somehow make those nations richer. After all, correlation does not imply causation (i.e., crowing roosters don’t cause the sun to rise).
Professor Bryan Caplan of George Mason University points out the methodological shortcomings is the “state capacity” theory.
In recent years, many social scientists…have fallen in love with the concept of “state capacity.” …To my mind, this is scarcely better than saying, “Good government is good; bad government is bad.” Matters would be different, admittedly, if the state capacity literature showed that good government is the crucial ingredient required for success.
But researchers rarely even try to show this. Instead, they look at various societies and say, “Look at how well-run the governments in successful countries are – and look at how poorly-run the governments in unsuccessful countries are.” The casual causal insinuation is palpable. …why not just ditch your premature focus on “state capacity” in favor of an open-minded exploration of social capacity? Good government might be the crucial ingredient for success. But maybe good government is a byproduct of wealth, trust, intelligence, freedom, or some cocktail thereof. …While good social outcomes all tend to go together, the state capacity literature fails to show that government is the crucial factor that makes all the others possible.
Two other scholars from George Mason University, Professor Peter Boettke and Rosolino Candela, address the issue in an academic study.
This paper reconceptualizes and unbundles the relationship between public predation, state capacity and economic development. …we argue that to the extent
that a causal relationship exists between state capacity and economic development, the relationship is proximate rather than fundamental. State capacity emerges from an institutional context in which the state is constrained from preying on its citizenry in violation of predefined rules limiting its discretion. When political constraints are not established to limit political discretion, then state capacity will degenerate from a means of delivering economic development to a means of predation.
They cite Mancur Olson’s work on “political bandits” to understand the limited conditions that would be necessary for there to be a causal relationship between taxes and growth.
Olson’s famous distinction between a “stationary bandit” and a “roving bandit” provides an illustration of our point regarding the emphasis placed on initial conditions. Olson provides a powerful argument for understanding how the self-interest of a revenue-maximizing ruler will align with the political conditions necessary for wealth maximization, not only for himself, but also for his subjects. In a world of roving banditry, a political ruler will have little incentive to invest in fiscal technologies required for regular taxation and judicial technologies that secure property rights and enforce contracts. Only when a bandit has settled down will he or she be incentivized to invest in the provision of public goods that encourage individuals to accumulate wealth, rather than concealing it from predators. However, by Olson’s own admission, his stationary bandit argument is a necessary, though not a sufficient condition for taming public predation.
Their conclusion is that constitutional constants on government are needed to ensure taxes aren’t a tool for additional predation.
In unbundling the relationship between state capacity and economic development, we have distinguished between the protective state, the productive state and the predatory state. To the extent that expansions in state capacity are consistent with economic development, this is because a credible commitment to a set of rules that constrain political discretion have been established. …Fundamentally, economic development requires a protective state from which state capacity emerges as a byproduct. If, however, political constraints are not established to limit political discretion, then state capacity will degenerate from a means of delivering economic development to a means of predation.
Professor Mark Koyama of George Mason University also has written wisely on this topic.
I’m not an academic, so I have a much simpler way of thinking about this issue.
When the IMF (and other bureaucracies) assert that higher taxes are good for growth, I explain that it’s all based on fairy dust or magic beans.
P.S. In a perverse way, I admire the IMF. The bureaucracy’s rationale for existence (dealing with fixed exchange rates) disappeared decades ago, yet the IMF managed to reinvent itself and is now bigger and more bloated than ever.
P.P.S. You won’t be surprised to learn that IMF bureaucrats receive tax-free salaries while pushing for higher taxes on everyone else.
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Image credit: IMF | Public Domain.
