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    • Real Reform, But Not in America

      Posted by John Stossel | June 17, 2010

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      Every time something goes wrong in America, Obama and Congress use it as an excuse for more government. Is the economy failing? Spend $800 billion on government make-work. Are the automakers failing? The government takes them over. An oil well breaks? Time for more government wind energy subsidies.

      But not every country takes the same path. The former Soviet satellite state Hungary held elections in April, and the conservative party won 68% percent of the seats. It passed sweeping reforms, like a 16% flat tax and a 15% cut in all government employees’ wages.

      In a speech to the Hungarian Parliament last week, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gave his reasons for a flat tax:

      In eight years, the Hungarian national debt went up from 53 percent to nearly 80 percent [of GDP]. This is an assault not only against contemporary Hungarians, but against future generations too...we need a ... work friendly tax system… so simple that a person with only eight grades of primary education could understand the rules.

      Guess when the U.S. government debt is expected to reach 80 percent of GDP? Just four years from now, in 2014.

      The Obama solution: raise taxes and spend more. The Hungarian solution: cut taxes and spend less.

      The Hungarian PM called for a temporary “full stop on telephone, furniture and vehicle purchase and replacement in the public sector.”

      And he spoke against stifling bureaucracy:

      It is not only tax cuts we need, but we must also start to cut red tape that is paralysing the economy in Hungary… the authorities should not rule, but should serve people -- should not set up barriers, but demolish them…

      Right on.

      TAGS
      Bailouts
      Economics
      Free Market
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      Regulation
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    This Week's Show -- May 16, 2013

    Government is at war against the little guy.

     

    Bureaucrats pass thousands of regulations to "keep people safer" and "make the marketplace more fair." Today 170,000 pages of federal regulations are on the books. Break just one rule, and government may wreck your life.

     

    So Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of overregulation.

     

    Nevada bureaucrats tell people who teach movie make-up that they must get an expensive license or close.

     

    Stossel has two empty rooms in his house now that his kids moved out. Using sites like Roomorama, he could make a little money and rent the rooms out. But two years ago, New York passed a law that makes most of what apartment rental sites do illegal. Stossel debates Liz Kreuger, who sponsored that bill.

     

    Is there any hope for the little guy? Authors of "Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers", Edward Lopez and Wayne Leighton, point out that deregulation did happen once. Americans pay much less to fly and to ship something because the CAB and ICC no longer exist. And we have cell phones because the FCC finally allowed spectrum auction. They say the only time things change is when the right people, the right ideas and the right circumstances all come together to repeal the bureaucrats rules.

     

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