The Reagan Revolution Sweeps the World

Steve Moore’s Wall Street Journal column celebrates the global shift to lower tax rates and free markets. To be sure, most foreign politicians are adopting pro‐​growth policies because of tax competition, not because they share Ronald Reagan’s vision. But the end result is a much stronger global economy:

…the Reagan economic philosophy of lower taxes, less regulation and free trade has never been more in vogue abroad — so much so that it has become the global economic operating system. …nations of old‐​Europe seem to be in a sprint to see which country can get their tax rates lowest quickest. Nicholas Vardy, the editor of “The Global Guru” economic newsletter calls the phenomenon “Europe’s Reagan Revolution.” …Austria cut its corporate tax rate to keep pace with its neighbor, Slovakia which recently adopted an 19% flat tax. Singapore is cutting taxes to compete with its 16% flat‐​tax rival Hong Kong. Northern Ireland wants to cut its tax rates so that it can compete with the economic gazelle of Europe, the Republic of Ireland. In 1988 Ireland was a high‐​unemployment stagnant economy with a 48% corporate tax rate, today that rate is 12.5% and the rest of the world is now desperate to match its economic results. Meanwhile German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck sold the latest tax cuts as “an investment in Germany as a business location.” …it is a testament to the Reagan economic revolution launched in 1981 that, a quarter century later, global tax rates are 25 percentage points lower on average today than in the 1970s. And those figures don’t even include this latest round of chopping under Reaganomics 2.0. The enactment of supply‐​side policies is helping ignite one of the strongest and longest world‐​wide economic expansions in history.