Daniel Henninger has a particularly good . . .

Panama Bernie

. . . opinion article up, you really should go read the whole thing. 

"Bernie Sanders caused the Panama Papers." Tragicomically he is correct. How? Like this: 

"After World War II, the governments of the West established tax regimes to support the reconstruction of their nations. Six decades later, that tax machinery, which runs the social-welfare states in the countries Bernie Sanders cites in every campaign stop as a model for America, has run totally amok—an unaccountable, devouring monster. Billionaires aren’t the only ones who run from it.

Most governments, including ours, overtax their citizens to feed their own insatiable need for money. Then the legal thieves running the government and their cronies, unwilling to abide the tax levels they created, move their wealth offshore to places like Panama."

Henninger makes a few salient observations about our European friends.

"Other than their national health-care systems, many of which are effectively bankrupt, most Europeans would be hard put to explain what it is their high-tax governments actually do with their money.

Suppressed for generations by high tax rates and regulatory minutiae, most Europeans survive in an economic half-life of gray and black markets, with their assets protected by cash-only transactions, bartering, and endless hours devising off-the-books deals involving family real estate, inflated art prices and anything else they can hide from the taxman. The Beatles actually wrote a song about it in 1966—“Taxman,” a grim ode to all this."

This is an odd, grim, and grubby existence. While this is most common in the south of Europe, it occurs nearly everywhere, and is driven by the shockingly low standard of living, and high tax rates. 

"One way or another, most people living in the countries run on the Obama-Sanders-Clinton model eventually go searching for their own private Panama. When private capital is under public assault, it will hide. From the wealthiest to the poorest, it creates a world of chiselers, not productive citizens."

Henninger goes on to note that in the US something has change in our political climate, something important.

"In the now-extinct Democratic Party—the party of Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton—room existed for the private sector to breathe. Not yet unhinged completely from economics, Democrats understood the symbiosis between healthy private production and public revenues. Both Presidents Carter and Clinton deregulated economic life.

No longer. The deconstructed party of Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and forced-recruit Hillary Clinton says: Just keep squeezing them.

This week marked a historic moment in the Democratic drift toward low-growth Euro-socialism. Both California and New York raised the minimum wage to $15. California Gov. Jerry Brown, who in his career has been every Democrat that ever was, summarized the true meaning of the new party. “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense,” he said, but they make sense “morally, socially and politically.'"

I agree, the progressives, especially those on the left, seem to have gone around the bend. It used to be they simply wanted more social benefits, but now, they want that, and they want to kill the free markets, the thing which creates the wealth which allows the social benefits. Isn't there a story about a golden egg laying goose, or something? Johan Norberg recently commented on this very subject. Johan Norberg has some thoughts on Sweden, welfare, and medicine . . . 

"Sen. Sanders is getting mocked now by Hillary Clinton and her supporters for a catastrophic interview he gave this week to the New York Daily News, revealing he knows little about his own proposals."

I discussed this earlier as well. Bernie Sanders is an old Marxist carbuncle . . .

The problem is that here at the End of History, we are finding some policies which looked good decades ago don't meet the test. Socialism, progressivism, and their sibling economic models, all look great, on paper, but in the real world are mostly unworkable, but have the salubrious benefit to the politicians of offering large amounts of graft, and corruption. Remember the game is not necessarily to get all the money, just more than the people around you. Having more is winning. Without this graft, and corruption how would the Clintons have amassed over $100 million? It is simply not possible. But with it, favors can be traded, backs scratched, and funds transferred. It is not just the Clintons, nearly every Congressman, and Senator who comes to washington comes with a modest financial portfolio. When they leave, they leave multi millionaires. This is not really possible on the salary they make. Its comes from the associated blue model graft, and corruption which offers this lucre.

The solution to this is pretty simple, enact a retail sales tax on goods and services. Eliminate the income tax, the corporate tax, the gift and estate tax, and the payroll tax. But make sure the sales tax is see in every transaction, and paid above and after the product, and services are totaled. It will need a Constitutional Amendment, so also amend to require the federal government balance its budget each year, allow debt in years where there is Declared War, like they used to do in the olden days. Allow debt accumulation of 10% of GDP per year for either 3 years or up to a total debt increase of 30%. After that require a vote of the people each year, or every two years to reauthorized debt payments, but only if the US remains in an active state of Declared War. Cold Wars don't count, even if declared.