Why Africans Starve

War and drought are the standard explanations for starving Africans. War and drought definitely take their toll. But so do tax rates.

A farmer who earns $68 a year after expenses from cash sales of a crop is taxed 10%. Once a farm’s annual income passes the $4,235 mark, additional income is taxed at 89%. Wanniski wonders if such a tax system wouldn’t cause Ethiopians to starve in the absence of war and drought.

Desperate for tax revenues, the Ethiopian government is blind to the incentive effects. Wanniski reports that there is a 150% excise tax on beer, 80% on soft drinks, 75% on tobacco, 100% on fuel, and so on. In addition, there is a 15% value added tax. With such gargantuan sales taxes, a poor country’s commerce is snuffed out.

Examining Ethiopian income taxes, Wanniski found that the rates apply to monthly salaries. Consequently, an Ethiopian is taxed even if he is out of work for most of the year and his average monthly income is below the threshold. Moreover, there are no personal deductions. Gross income is taxable income.

These tax rates on 67 million Ethiopians produce $1 billion in annual revenues, of which $125 million services Ethiopia’s debts to the IMF and other foreign lenders.

Many things are wrong with this picture. Ethiopia is in the revenue minimizing range of the Laffer curve. Even the IMF must know this.

The IMF is supposed to advise debtors about economic policy. In Ethiopia, as elsewhere, the IMF has failed.

In Zimbabwe, a 45% tax rate strikes enterprise dead when annual incomes reach about $500 with a 30% surtax on top of the 45% (see www.wanniski.com).

A person might think that the Congressional Black Caucus would lead the charge for more realistic taxation. Alas, addicted to handout politics at home, the Black Caucus agitates for more foreign aid to Africa – which means more government funds for warring factions to fight over.

Africa is dying, because Western policymakers are still carrying on their war against Reaganomics. Stagflation – rising inflation and unemployment – offered control-minded policymakers the chance to tighten their grip on economies by regulating prices and incomes in order to combat stagflation. But along came President Reagan, who used supply-side economics to reverse the policy mix and to cure stagflation.

The Reagan revolution was repeated in England, where Prime Minister Thatcher slashed marginal tax rates, and in France and Italy, where socialized industries were privatized.

Economies escaped from the clutches of the control-minded, an offense for which Reagan is not forgiven.

Many Western policymakers place greater value on a more equal distribution of income than they place on economic growth. For them, high tax rates are a desirable tool. They are willing to sacrifice greater income and tax revenue growth in order to narrow income differences.

The controversial CBS program on Reagan is a propaganda attack designed to destroy Reagan’s success in order to restore belief in government solutions. Neoconservatives, with their goal of American Empire, are helping the leftwing to revive "big government religion."

In this atmosphere Africans are likely to be sacrificed. Giving Ethiopians a Reaganite policy prescription would conflict with the desire to extirpate Reagan’s influence.

If tax policy allowed Africans to make money, there would be less incentive for Africans to fight over who controls the government in order to pocket the revenues. Wars would diminish as alternative sources of wealth arose, making it less of a life and death matter to have control of the government.

Westerners, however, believe that sending food aid is a surer display of compassion than exporting Reagan’s tax policies. The food aid, of course, subsidizes war. The recipient government uses the aid to feed its supporters, while allowing its opponents to starve.

This seems to be Robert Mugabe’s plan in Zimbabwe. His attack on white farmers disguises that his real target is his black opposition.

Now that Mugabe has destroyed the farms that fed the country and provided export earnings, famine looms. Food aid will enable Mugabe to nourish his supporters while starving the opposition. The compassionate Western donors will be complicit in an act of genocide.

But Western policymakers will be saved the pangs of bad conscience by their refusal to recommend Reagan policies "that benefit the rich."

Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

"I'm like anyone else on this planet -- I'm very moved by world hunger. I see the same commercials, with those little kids, starving, and very depressed. I watch those kids and I go, '(darn), I know the FILM crew could give this kid a sandwich!' There's a director five feet away going, 'DON'T FEED HIM YET! GET THAT SANDWICH OUTTA HERE! IT DOESN'T WORK UNLESS HE LOOKS HUNGRY!!!'
But I'm not trying to make fun of world hunger. Matter of fact, I think I have the answer. You want to stop world hunger? Stop sending these people food. Don't send these people another bite, folks. You want to send them something, you want to help? Send them U-Hauls. Send them U-Hauls, some luggage, send them a guy out there who says, 'Hey, we been driving out here every day with your food, for, like, the last thirty or forty years, and we were driving out here today across the desert, and it occurred to us that there wouldn't BE world hunger, if you people would LIVE WHERE THE FOOD IS!
YOU LIVE IN A DESERT! YOU LIVE IN A (dog-gone) DESERT! NOTHING GROWS OUT HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW OUT HERE! YOU SEE THIS? HUH? THIS IS SAND. KNOW WHAT IT'S GONNA BE A HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW? IT'S GONNA BE SAND! YOU LIVE IN A (dog-gone) DESERT! GET YOUR STUFF, GET YOUR (dog-gone-stuff), WE'LL MAKE ONE TRIP, WE'LL TAKE YOU TO WHERE THE FOOD IS! WE HAVE DESERTS IN AMERICA -- WE JUST DON'T LIVE IN THEM, (you darn people)!"

-- Sam Kinison (RIP)
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