The Irish export miracles

After a gentle jab at the Republic's Irish language road signs earlier in the week, Friday's Wall Street Journal (subs. req'd) returns to a theme recently promoted in the same pages by Pat Cox -- the Irish economy as the ultimate vindication of low-tax supply side economics. The pitch this time is the usefulness of the lesson for Colombia:

[President] Uribe need look no further than Ireland, a Catholic nation once hopelessly mired in poverty, dominated by socialist thought and somewhat fatalistic toward what seemed a hopeless plight ...

Much of what Ireland first tried when it faced budget deficit problems will be familiar to Colombians, including tax hikes that managed to cut the primary deficit in half but also suffocated growth ...

What differentiates those two periods [late 90s vs early 90s] is the change in Ireland's tax regime. In 1996 the corporate tax rate was 40% but by 2000 it was down to 24%, making Ireland a magnet for capital ...

But what's missing in Colombia is an application to supply-side growth of the kind of unyielding commitment that Mr. Uribe applied to security. Should he change course, the Irish miracle would be the best blueprint.

Now a sleepy Friday is not the best time to get into the details of how this is a pretty questionable reading of Irish corporate tax policy (which had incentives for multinationals long before the particular cut in the headline rate referred to). So let's merely note that this recommendation provides a new cover story for Sinn Fein's Colombia Three, allegedly in the country to provide military training to the rebels, but perhaps ripe for repackaging as economic advisers to the Colombian government. Brilliant!