Abolish the Capital Gains Tax: Everybody's Doing It

Fourteen members of the OECD have already eliminated it. America needs to follow suit.

"[T]he appropriate capital gains [tax] rate is zero."
--Alan Greenspan

by Rod D. Martin
April 15, 2006

How many times have we heard liberals exhorting America to act like the rest of the world?

For literally decades, the denizens of the Left have been badgering us to adopt socialized medicine, abolish capital punishment, and support other "progressive" measures so we can appear more "enlightened" to their friends in Old Europe and other lovely places.

Never mind that their ideas are anything but progressive, particularly if by "progressive" we mean the achievement of actual progress.  Hyper-progressive France, for instance, has had double-digit unemployment for most of the past quarter century, even with a 35-hour work week; its youth unemployment rate stands at 23 percent, its Muslim-heavy suburbs are 50 percent unemployed, and those relative few who do get to work pay a combined tax rate of 68 percent.  They are little more than (very self-satisfied) serfs.

No wonder the whole world has be…