On taxation more generally, he documents the increasing consensus among tax economists in favor of lower marginal tax rates, elimination of special tax provisions that bias investment decisions, lower or zero taxes on capital, and a shift toward taxing consumption. My Hoover colleague and friend Ken Judd, a tax economist who’s a registered Democrat, told me that he was at a meeting of tax economists at the Treasury which many of the leading tax economists in the country attended, and you couldn’t tell from people’s comments whether they had an R or a D after their name.

This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat – accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum. Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the U.N. General Assembly last September that “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)

European capitalism may have a conscience. It’s not clear it has a pulse. And, actually, when you’re burning Greek bank clerks to death in defence of your benefits, your “conscience” isn’t much in evidence, either.

The issue with the teachers’ unions is not the unions per se–agitating for higher pay wouldn’t make much difference, and is indeed probably a great idea. The problem is that the structure they impose makes it almost impossible (though not quite!) to innovate, and to spread the innovations that work. The cushy job protections and strict work rules are great for the teachers. But the schools aren’t there for the benefit of the teachers.

For a while it was looking like the British political class was taking such stories as George Orwell’s 1984 and Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta as prescriptive guidebooks, rather than as dire warnings. However, this development, on balance, seems to be a welcome tapping-of-the-brake, at least, for the British super-state.

The irony is that in the name of expanding health care coverage the administration is making it harder than ever for unskilled workers to get started in the workforce. Clearly, the new health care bill enacted in March will have negative effects on the employment of low-skill workers.