The EU stopped catching up with the USA 50 years ago!
In this clip from an interview with Chile’s Axel Kaiser, I discuss “Wagner’s Law” and the lessons to be learned from fiscal policy in Western Europe.
If you don’t want to watch the video, my discussion can be summarized in three sentences.
- Yes, welfare states in Western Europe are comparatively rich by world standards.
- But those countries became rich when they had relatively small governments.
- Adopting high taxes and big welfare states has since stunted their economic growth.
And here’s a fourth sentence that I should have mentioned.
- They compensate for bad fiscal policy by having laissez-faire policies in other areas.
I expect that some people won’t accept my argument without some supporting evidence, so I’m going to share some charts.
We’ll start with this chart from Our World in Data. As you can see, nations in Western Europe has almost no welfare states prior to…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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