A U-Turn on the Road to Serfdom

Governments throughout the Western world are spending at levels that could not have been imagined by pre-war economists even by people such as Keynes. High levels of government spending have had a significant effect on economic growth and on economic freedom. In his 2013 Hayek lecture, Grover Norquist, founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, explains how the tide can be turned. He discusses both the political and economic mechanisms necessary to effect change. In three commentaries on the lecture, economists set the UK and European context and discuss how policy changes on this side of the Atlantic can make our economies more conducive to reform. Such reforms are necessary, argue all the authors, to ensure that we have dynamic economies in which governments serve the needs of their citizens rather than simply tax and spend more. This monograph is essential reading for students of political economy as well as all those interested in economic reform and the policy debates taking place in the United States.