"The higher taxes go, the more people cheat on them, the less revenue comes in."

http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2011/06/08/europe_is_warning_us

Another gem: "Europe is essentially defenseless, as governments further trim defense budgets to keep shrinking spread-the-wealth entitlements alive. "

"An acknowledged despair now seems to permeate Western Europe."
I am in Sweden right now, and I'm not seeing the same level of despair that I saw in the USA.

A conservative facebook friend shared this article today.
I sure hope the writer was not compensated for his work, because his writing skills are terrible.

All this European turmoil raises a paradox. If dispirited Europeans are conceding that something is terribly wrong with their half-century-long experiment with socialism, unassimilated immigrants, cultural apologies, defense cuts and post-nationalism, why in the world is the Obama administration intent on adopting what Europeans are rejecting?

Show me how Obama is intent on doing any of that. Please.

because i sure would be happy. i have seen a lot of continuing bush policies and giving baby republican temper tantrums what they want.

Welcome to the upside down world of Victor Davis Hanson, retired professor of the classics turned neoconservative propagandist. His columns are carried every week in the local newspaper. They are works of artifice, relying on half-truths, omissions and ideological assumptions. I've been rebutting them every week for several months. You can find my latest response here

http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/06/10/2422653/we-should-learn-from-europe.html

Here's my response to the snippet you quoted.

Hanson takes the tax fairy myth - the repeatedly proven false idea that tax cuts always produce an increase in government revenue <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/19/joe-walsh/rep-joe-walsh-said-every-time-weve-cut-taxes-reven/"><4></a>, <a href="http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1864/republican-tax-nonsense"><5></a>, <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html"><6></a>, <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=165"><7></a> - and flips it around to assert that higher taxes always produce a decrease in government revenue. He attributes revenue decline to tax evasion and points to Italy as an example, but he ignores the deindustrialization of Italy as well as an expanding cash economy and shoddy banking practices as factors of decreased revenue and tax evasion in Italy and other European countries <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/18780853?story_id=18780853"><8></a>, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/efc3510e-9214-11e0-9e00-00144feab49a.html"><9></a>, <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/16792848"><10></a>.

I wonder how the local community college would grade his paper?
Thanks for the links, and Welcome to DU!