Some Clarity on Taxes

Tom, Schaller, fisking Jonah Goldberg, takes time to introduce some useful clarity into the debate over the taxes we pay. He works off this familiar OECD chart, and adds conceptual commentary. Specificlly, that bar showing us as fifth lowest in tax burden among the relevant subset--does it include state and local? Schaller specifies: yes, it does. Also this handy line graph, hammering home the points that (a) overall tax burden has remained pretty steady for a generation; and (b) it's Social Security/Medicare that have seen dramatic increases.

Another thought about the bar graph: I'm impressed at how most of the high-tax countries are those that we think of as comparatively well-governed--not just in terms of "social services," but in terms of more general measures of social capital--transparency, trust--and I believe also voter contentment. I guess I'm thinkin' Scandinavians now, and I pretend to ignore Iceland. Is Italy an exception? I love to travel in Italy but I tend to think of Italy as one of those places in which taxation is a form of licensed looting.

But at the other end of the scale. bracketing the United States, I find Japan and Switzerland--two countries that seem about as well governed as any on the list. So maybe it is difficult to draw any firm conclusions about the relationship of taxes and good government. On the other hand, I suspect that not many people would find themselves better governed in Mexico (the bottom of the last) than they would be in Sweden (the top).