The tariff promoted by Representative Willis Hawley, left, and Senator Reed Smoot seemed like a good idea until it helped set off a collapse of global trade that intensified the Great Depression.Credit…National Photo Company Collection/Library of Congress.
“Bolivarian socialism” … took Venezuela from being South America’s richest country to a humanitarian catastrophe. Sweden attempted a form of socialism in the 1970s and ’80s, only to reverse course after it experienced massive capital flight and a financial crisis during which interest rates hit 75 percent. France’s Socialist government imposed a 75 percent tax on earnings over one million euros in 2012; it dropped the tax two years later as the wealthy packed their bags. Britain’s National Health Service, whose advocates chronically complain is “underfunded,” is in a state of perpetual crisis even as health care, according to the BBC, gobbles up roughly one third of government spending.
Source: Bret Stephens, New York Times