Pinning Hopes on Tax Competition  This article was published in
the Washington Times, December 5, 2002. What would your reaction
be if you learned the countries of the world all decided
everyone must drive the same car and this new car must cost at
least $50,000?  In this hypothetical situation, the rationale
given for this decision is that some countries were able to make
cars more inexpensively than other countries, and this was not
fair to the high-cost countries that were losing market share to
low-cost countries. In addition, high-cost countries demanded
that every new car have leather seats whether the consumer
wanted them or not. The reason for insisting upon high-cost
leather seats was because it was “unfair” to leather tanners
union workers to be undercut by producers of cheaper cloth
seats.  As absurd as the above may seem, this type of reasoning
is behind the demand of major European high-tax countries that
low-tax countries increase their taxes. It would have the same
damaging impact on workers in