Be Nice

One thing that could be done in Canada to endear the population to politicians would be to increase the wealth by lowering taxes. It works! Yet another example here:

Iceland's tax reduction lesson for Canada

NEIL REYNOLDS

August 15, 2007 at 7:48 AM EDT

OTTAWA — What's the best way to expand a welfare state, irrationally assuming for the moment that you want to expand a welfare state? Cut taxes. Especially cut corporate taxes. You will collect less revenue every time you nick a dollar but you will have many more dollars to nick - and you will almost certainly find yourself with more tax revenue than you know what to do with. Iceland is a good example. Though tiny in population (with 280,000 people, it has only twice the population of Prince Edward Island), Iceland provides a compact manual to supply-siding your way to public sector expansion, a large-type Big Government for Dummies guidebook.

Iceland now collects far more revenue (as a percentage of gross domestic product) from a low corporate tax rate (18 per cent) than it used to collect from a high corporate tax rate (50 per cent). Thoroughly Nordic in its instincts, the country has used part of this windfall revenue to buy more government - even as other countries have cut back on government. In 1992, Iceland's government spending accounted for 32 per cent of a stagnant GDP. Now it accounts for 40 per cent of an expanding GDP, a 25-per-cent increase in public sector share in 15 years.

cont.

etc.

Iceland now buys marginally more government than Canada buys (39.5 per cent of GDP) with cut-rate taxes on personal income and corporate profits - indeed with less than one-half the Canadian rates.

However you split up Iceland's increase in national income, this small country's economic transformation in the past 15 years has made it a supply-side example to the world. A basket-case economy in the 1980s, with an inflation rate that hit 100 per cent, Iceland is now the fifth-richest country in the world (based on per capita GDP, adjusted for purchasing power, of $40,000 U.S.). In the International Monetary Fund listing, the only richer countries are (tax haven) Luxembourg, (oil-rich) Norway, (low-tax) Ireland and the U.S. (Canada ranks 10th with per-capita GDP of $35,600).
Lower taxes - and paradoxically higher tax revenue - have helped transform Iceland from a basket-case economy in the 1980s into the fifth-richest country in the world, based on per capita GDP.

Lower taxes - and paradoxically higher tax revenue - have helped transform Iceland from a basket-case economy in the 1980s into the fifth-richest country in the world, based on per capita GDP. (Simon Johnson/Reuters)
The Globe and Mail

Hannes Gissurarson, a professor of politics at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik and author of a forthcoming book on what he calls "Iceland's renaissance," says the decisive factor in the country's success has been the elimination of high tax rates on income - whether personal or corporate.

In a paper co-written with U.S. economist Daniel J. Mitchell and published this month by the Washington-based Cato Institute, Prof. Gissurarson says "Iceland's paradox" - lower tax rates, higher revenues - "documents a strong Laffer Curve effect." Before Iceland lowered its rates on personal income and profits, he says, these taxes collected revenue equal to 9 per cent of GDP. They now collect revenue equal to 18 per cent.

cont.

etc.

Named for Arthur Laffer, the California economist who inspired Ronald Reagan's tax cuts in the 1980s, the Laffer Curve holds that there are two tax rates that will produce the same amount of revenue - one of them high, one of them low. A corollary is that, masochism aside, low rates are preferable to high rates. Iceland provides laboratory proof. It began cutting rates in 1992, incrementally reducing its taxation of "productive activity."

By the end of the decade, the rate on corporate income had fallen to 18 per cent and the rate on investment income (dividends, interest, capital gains) had fallen to 10 per cent (from 40 per cent). Though nominally high at 36 per cent (down from 48 per cent), Iceland's flat tax on personal income contains a universal deduction that protects significant income from any tax. (Iceland funds municipal spending through a separate income tax; the central government's flat-rate income tax is 22 per cent.)

Only two countries have lower tax rates on "productive activity" - Ireland (with its celebrated 12.5-per-cent rate) and Hungary (with a 16-per-cent rate).

In Iceland, the impact has been remarkable. In 1998, the country's 40-per-cent rate on investment income produced 2 per cent of government revenue; in 2006, its 10-per-cent rate produced 14 per cent of government revenue. Economic growth accelerated, averaging more than 4 per cent a year for the past decade, more than 6 per cent for the past three years.

Prof. Gissurarson and Mr. Mitchell do not herald Iceland as a low-tax country; rather as a country that uses low tax rates to encourage saving and investment. On the other hand, it taxes consumption in the usual European manner with high (24 per cent) sales taxes. Yet the two economists insist that Iceland's tax rate reductions are, beyond any doubt, "a supply-side success."

The lower rates produce faster economic growth, which produces an expanding tax base, which produces "healthy" rises in revenues.

High tax rates are counterproductive - whether judged from an economic or ideological perspective. Yet Canada clings to them, champions them. Why?

Your point being....?

I think you may have a point R'man, in that giving fewer taxes initially to politicians may cause them to be less corrupt with what they are given in taxes, but I could be wrong. In fact, I probably am, because I'm not a politician who is at the mercy of every lobby group that happens along.

I'm all for lower taxes, but I would insist that what lower taxes we have paid, at least at the provincial level, has not gone to the most needy in our society like I would have intended. Instead it has gone to subsidies to mining businesses and transportation firms, while real estate developers refuse to pay their own way in waste management and services for the developments they build.

Once it is acknowledged that lower taxes as a means to the end of a fairer distribution of society's resources (note I did NOT say "wealth") for all, then we have something to talk about. Until then, your three pages of comment are as of little moment as the opinions of the President of Kazakhstan.

It's funny

As soon as I read Neil Reynold's column this morning I thought to myself - 'Wonder how long it'll be before the R/Man puts that sucker up as a reference?'

Must have been prescient - he liked it so much he posted the whole thing. Even the utterly out of place nonsense about the Laffer curve.

Are you going to start using Iceland as your new avatar now R/man? Time to throw over the Emerald Tiger for the Frozen one?

Before you blow that trumpet too hard you might want to check the population of the place - less than half the population of Vancouver; that's the city of Vancouver - not the metropolitan area either.

There are about 300,000 permanent residents in the place - a remarkably homogenous population in an area about 3 times the size of Vancouver Island (which has more than double the population). Incomes are very equally distributed and the government is highly socialistic. Reynolds, as usual, hasn't done his homework and neither, apparently, have you.

About 70% of Iceland's income comes from the fishing industry although there has been some attempt lately to diversify into tourism and technical areas.

Also

The statistics Reynolds quotes are highly questionable. Not only does he have the population figure wrong, his growth figures are out of whack too.

Source: CIA Factbook.

So maybe, like almost everything little Neil writes, this one too should be taken with a hefty dose of the salts.

Yes, G West, R-man's

Yes, G West, R-man's offering is yet another example of the old saying that "figures don't lie, but liars do figure" (I acknowledge that R-man is quoting someone else)

Pretty impressive, but if one takes even a quick look at the means whereby these countries have achieved their status (stati? :-)), it becomes obvious their strategies are very different from each other.

Norway, for example, is a very Socialistic country noted not only for careful husbanding of resources and the profits from them - such as with the oil industry - but it also for imposing very high personal and corporate income taxes.

On the other hand, the US as #4, just ahead of Iceland, is a prodigious wastrel of its own and other's resources. Even with its relatively low tax-rates it is an economic basket-case, kept on international life-support only because if it is allowed to collapse, it will bring the rest of us down with it.

R-man doesn't seem to wonder why #4 US has such an embarassingly large proportion of poor and working-poor in its population compared to other Western countries. Perhaps this will prod him into figuring out who those low taxes actually helped.

Diversifying and Growth

As you, West, point out. Iceland has diversified and expanded their businesses. They have done this by lowering corporate taxes and thereby attracting new businesses and investments and, therefore, the government has received more income.

What the government does with that income is another story.

The fact is corporate taxes were lowered and government coffers grew.

And furthermore

As demographics and other statistics show Iceland ain't much of an example of anything - except how housing subsidies and an abundance of geo-thermal energy will give a tiny country a little leg up.

Not to mention the fact that they don't have any defence or military budget at all and that 70% of their income comes from fishing - he also hasn't mentioned the enormous VAT that Icelanders pay, but, coming from Great Britain as he does, he probably doesn't care to bring THAT up.
If pee wee weren't burning up billions in his Afghanistan adventure and actually enforced a fair tax system instead of the dogs' breakfast we have here now - tax rates for individuals would go down and the range of brackets would flatten too.

Much ado - like everything Reynolds writes - about nothing.

Lowering corporate tax rates does not stimulate the economy in any kind of a sustainable way - especially in light of lax competition and monopoly rules. They should call it the LAUGHTER curve - not the Laffer curve. Reagan created (until Bush) the biggest deficit economy in the world and all the people who've been using their houses like ATMs in the States are starting to suffer for it now.

What a joke! As for those government coffers growing - the US is currently almost 9 Trillion dollars in debt...that's a real laugher!

Am I confusing you with the Facts?

Aluminum smelting is the most important power-intensive industry in Iceland. There are currently two plants in operation, with one under construction and two in the planning stage.

Alcan owns a plant in Straumsvík near the town of Hafnarfjörður which has been in operation since 1969. Its initial capacity was 33,000 metric tons per year (mtpy) but has since been expanded several times and now has a capacity of 180,000 mtpy. Alcan is studying the feasibiliy of expanding the plant to a capacity of 460,000 mtpy;

United States-based aluminum manufacturer Alcoa has become a major investor in Iceland and has a major plant under construction near the town of Reyðarfjördur.

Iceland enjoys high levels of freedom from corruption, investment freedom, trade freedom, financial freedom, property rights, business freedom, fiscal freedom, and monetary freedom. A point of pride is that Iceland is rated as the world's least corrupt economy.

I would have thought that many of theses attributes were ones that a BC'er would wish to emulate, West. The maritime economy and the aluminum from plentiful power seem to also mirror BC. The absence of corruption is also pertinent to Reid's article. Why do you so often refute unquestionable facts that make people's lives better? I thought that your were in favour of an expanded government with healthy finances for social programmes. Iceland's history of lowering taxes has been a great success for their people.

Baloney

Iceland has no military budget, not a single drop of oil and until a few years ago Icelanders who wanted to buy consumer goods flew to either St John's or Boston.

If they make deals with Alcan like the BC Government has just made here with BC Hydro I pity them. Much ado about nothing - just like the Laffer curve. You only pay attention to the 'facts' that tend to support your point of view R man the reason it's a non-corrupt economy is because it is a socialist economy and a relatively egalitarian one.

Ten years ago it's biggest export was Bjork. It's perfectly fine to lower taxes for everyone if the taxation regime is relatively flat and fair. When things go a little sour, as they will when the corporate types start leveraging their compromised assets, as they always do.. things will change. As for Reynolds column, he doesn't even have the GDP growth factors right.

Spare me. Your system won't work in Canada because we have governments who care more about their friends and their ties to the business community you love so much that it never can happen. More handouts to commerce will just make things worse for your friends and mine who can't afford a ridiculously inflated home now.

You might want to check the markets today - it's all going bad. It's a shame that's the only way we seem to learn - the TSE has now lost 15% since the start of the year and billions have gone up in smoke because they've been worshipping the system you love. Sad, sad stuff. If we'd built the country we should have done from the 70s this wouldn't have happened - we'd have a much more egalitarian society like Iceland's.

Sad.

By the way, have you checked the VAT in Iceland?

A Socialist Economy, you say

Socialist, if you say so. Sounds OK to me. I also have no problem with high consumer taxes (VAT at 24%). Lower corporate and personal taxes, as they have done in Iceland, and raise consumption taxes - OK.

No, not OK you completely ignore the fact that

The corporate giveaway will, if followed the way it has been here since the 70s - just lead eventually to concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Tax every dollar, no matter how earned, the same and you'll get your lower tax rates and flat tax structure. Get it?

If the centre right government follows the current tack - just like the idiots did in both Maggie the T's UK and the States (and as we're doing here) it'll all end up in the pockets of a few corporate kleptocrats.

Why can't you and Reynolds see something that's as obvious as the nose on your face?

You pretent to care about equity and fairness while you're shilling for dissemblers who've lied to you and everyone else.

It doesn't work. PERIOD.

And you should be able to see, if you're following the actions of central banks all over the world, how dangerous your worn-out ideas really are.

Wake up man - the west is being run into bankruptcy by people who couldn't give a damn about the average citizen. Even a so-called philanthropist like Gates can't see that that the aid he's given to places like Ghana is actually making things worse - infant mortality there is rising - not falling and Care has finally decided to stop taking American 'tied' aid because of the negative effects.

Christ man, Iceland has 300,000 people - and absolutely nothing to teach an economy like Canada's.

Sounds like Maggie talking

A couple of years ago Alcan was awarded with the Highest Business Honours afer 40 years in Iceland. Don't know about, "when things go sour". If it's a non-corrupt economy and, as you say, a socialist and egalitarian society does that mean that you a actually a right winger because you say that we have, "absolutely nothing" to learn from them?

I'm shocked. GWest utterly dismisses anything to do with a corrupt-free egalitarian society that he himself calls highly-socialist because its small.

Alcan awarded what?

I suppose they were awarded that honour because they were actually making aluminium at their aluminium plant in Iceland. Here in BC, they're running on one shift (a buddy came down to find work in the Lower Mainland last year after the maintenance shutdown - he was told that the second shift would never start back up) despite selling into a strong (though not rising) market, yet Alcan sees fit to sue for increased water removals from the Nechako to increase their power exports but not to make more aluminium! What gives?

In the global market, it's easier for Alcan to increase profits per dollar invested by marketing power from BC simply because it can. If there were a submarine transmission cable to the British Isles from Iceland, Alcan would be selling power to Britain into a pricier market, and shutting down aluminium production in Iceland, while running three shifts at Kitimat. But they're not. It's a global economy, and Iceland's gain is our loss.

To boot, Alcan is guaranteed its low water rates for power production regardless of whether that power is used in aluminium production (as was originally intended in the contract) or whether generated for export sales. The BCUC, with interventions from private citizens tried to fight that one (that was part of the lawsuit that was settled last year) but lost. Once again, BC taxpayers get ripped off by giving away the water to Alcan but getting only a few of the promised jobs in return.

And we - citizens, employers, businesses, institutions, everything - still have to purchase our made-in-BC-advantage-cheap-hydro-power at world market rates because Gordo privatised Hydro in order to conform to....what?.... someone remind me again why we're supposed to pay market rates for our made-in-BC-advantage?

Sheesh. Is clear thinking really in such short supply?

Those stupid business awards

You must know business awards don't mean a damn thing anyway R/man - just a bunch of thieves getting together to down a few jars and pat each other on the back. Doesn't mean anything in Iceland or in Canada except for business worshippers and wannabes.

Someone I know was middle manager for Delta Hotels the year they were voted one of BC's best companies to work for (and they made the top 50 in Canada that year too). He left because he wouldn't continue to do the kind of squeezing his superiors were constantly forcing him to do to get more for less out of the people who actually did the work in the hotels he worked at.

I didn't dismiss anything R/Man - I just said it was meaningless as an example - as I pointed out earlier, it's not very long since Iceland's biggest money making export was Bjork - and I wasn't kidding. It's just plain irrelevant - and if you think that a 24% VAT would sell in this country, where 80% of the working population can't afford a home anymore, you're smoking something besides tailor-mades these days.

As for the reason it's not corrupt (if it truly isn't) - did you ever think that's largely because it IS egalitarian?

Maybe 20%

Right now in BC 6+7 is 13%, another 7 with a concurrent reduction in personal federal tax would be acceptable.

What could be egalitarian?

A high consumption tax combined with a lowered personal tax puts more cash into people's pockets, encouraging higher levels of savings and less frivolous spending. Since more people are living on credit and are overextended, as you have said, I would have though that that was right up your alley West.

I disagree - it just plays into the hands of corporate interests

The point is realisticman, you go at the problem from the wrong end. The Nixon/Reagan/Thatcher nonsense has gotten us into this mess - why prolong the pain and continue to make things worse.

Tax every dollar no matter how you earn it and you'd get your tax reductions without a huge and administratively hateful consumption tax. You'd have flat tax rates and they'd be lower for everyone and there would be far less chance of people fiddling with the system the way they do now. I'm all for putting cash in peoples' pockets - but not just Gordon Campbell and his friends' pockets.

All high consumption taxes do is stimulate the black market - just like rationing.

Time to enter the real world. If Iceland's doing well it's doing well for the reasons I've advanced not the crock that Reynolds is selling.

How many times do you have to have it demonstrated to you that this ain't working?

Things are no so desperate that benny boy bernanke had to drop the discount rate by .5 of a point and the Canadian Financial community is spinning like a top trying to figure out how they can keep the contagion at bay: At the very same time that the forest industry is going up in smoke because of the melting housing economy in the States.

A situation that isn’t likely to start to improve till about 2009. We’re in for trouble realisticman and you and I both know how we got here.

And that is ABSOLUTELY SCANDALOUS!

It's Bjork

Bjork first and foremost then fish. That what makes Iceland scandal free and wealthy. It has nothing to do with low corporate taxes and corresponding business investments in software development and pharmaceutical developments and high consumption taxes which reduce rampant consumerism. Or aluminium production and investments by Alcan and Alcoa. Nothing to do with diversifying the economy, and privatizing state-owned industries. It's mainly Bjork. Thanks for the clarification Mr. West.

You might want to ask

You might want to ask the people of Kitimat how they feel about Alcan - easy to pretend things are rosy in a tiny country in the middle of the North Atlantic that is afraid to join the EU; that has no oil and couldn't defend itself if it were attacked by a herd of voracious sea lions because it has no defence budget.

The point is R/man, you haven't actually addressed a single one of the obvious holes in Reynold's ariticle - from his flawed statistics to his lack of information about Iceland's geothermal energy, centralized heating system and housing subsidies.

Canadians who live in a far north and isolated environment like Iceland get a sizeable tax break now - otherwise they wouldn't live there. Icelanders are pretty much the same.

Next time try and pick an example that actually means something. Not a country whose closest Canadian analogue is Prince Edward Island.

I've always liked Bjork though. And, you might find, if you look, that there are more people of Icelandic heritage in Manitoba than there are in Iceland. The most renowned poet in the Icelandic Language is a Canadian. If all those folks, like the refugees from Ireland who left their homeland cause things were so desperately bad there, had thought things were as great as you do they never would have left.

Thin out the survivors long enough and survival isn't such a difficult thing for a while.

In the end, if Iceland is successful it'll be on account of the spirit and cooperation of the people who live there - not because a few neanderthals still think that corporations care for anything but themselves. Watching the hedge fund gurus and the banks and the rosy scenario doughheads try to pretent we're not suffering from 30 years of thievery is pretty interesting though.

Sadly, the close ties our Canadian Governments have built with the US probably mean a lot of Canadians are going to start to suffer soon too.

Et tu...

Sounds a lot like Canada to me. In fact Canada may be easier to secure a mortgage loan.

http://www.sedlabanki.is/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=4591

Once again, like Ireland, the facts get in the way of your socialist argument, West.

No they don't

Not until you get all the Irish Canadians and Icelandic Canadians and Limey Canadians to come and tell me why they're sorry they left their countries and came to Canada.

Moreover, if they do so tomorrow, I'd welcome them to catch the first steamer back.

Those are the facts people like you never want to contend with and you know it R'man - thin out the plants enough on the ground and almost anything can live anywhere.

Once again, you're apparently incapable of understanding:
a) why Iceland isn't an avatar of anything because of its size, the homogeneity of its population, the special circumstances of its climate and geography and whatever temporary positive results may appear to obtain, they
b) in no way contradict the scandalous record of what neo-classical economics and elitist government have done to a decent place like Canada,
c) and which, as is now happening in Ireland and will soon happen in Iceland, no doubt, turns into a nightmare for the average family who ought to have the rewards you're more than prepared to shower on corporate kleptocrats like Alcan and its enabler Gordon Campbell.

The point is, you've simply been taken in by the lies and can't see the truth of it.

I notice a lot of American 'manufacturers' are also discovering that products created by cheap deracinated labour are almost always cheap deracinated goods - damaging both the soul and the health of their creators and their ultimate users - all for the profit of the people YOU seem to worship.

But go ahead – ignore the writing on the wall; keep your fingers crossed because that’s about all this bankrupt gilded age has going for it.

Dear Pastor West

Don't get your knickers in too tight a knot. I was merely pointing out that mortgages are as easy, if not easier, to obtain in Canada as they are in Iceland and that they are often for a higher proportion of the purchase price. This, of course is what constitutes housing subsidies in Iceland. Therefore, your supposition, one amongst the erroneous many, that housing subsides are one of the main reasons for Iceland's magnificent successes is also wrong.

Since I find your comment regarding homogeneity a tinge distasteful I shall ignore it. If you would care to climb out further on this limb and explain yourself I'm sure we would all benefit from your insight as to the superiority of less racially mixed societies than ours and their concurrent social superiorities - as you seem to be suggesting.

No it's not R/man

The point about homogeneity is pretty obvious. I shouldn't have to explain it - egalitarian societies are a lot easier to imagine when people look and act alike - when they share a history, a culture and an outlook...when they don't have to deal every day with the 'other'.

You're the one who, a bit more than a year ago made a personal remark about someone 'cruising' around looking at Indian villages and reservations as a memento mori of the fact that there ain't much equality or common shared purpose in this place called Canada.

But by all means, continue to ignore it - you seem to manage to ignore all the problems that exist in this place because of our colonial and imperial background, something to which the current corporate kleptocracy of YOUR avatars adds insult to injury. This system and these crooks are not my fault - you're the one who cheers the system that is going to lead to about 10 million Americans losing their homes.

Not me.

You're the one who can't make a decent case for reducing corporate taxes because it just simply will not work - not me.

Unless such reductions are part of a thoroughgoing reform and rebalancing of the whole taxation structure such an action will - as BC and the USA and Australia proves in spades - do little more than concentrate more wealth in the hands of folks who currently have too much already.

I'm not saying that racially pure countries are better - I'm simply observing that multicultural and pluralistic ones are a lot more difficult to manage and imagine as humane places. Running just beneath the surface of this country and this province especially is a strong and noxious current of racism and prejudice. Just wait until the recession starts to cut and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

By the way, you're the one who claims Iceland is a magnificent success, not me.

I just think it's irrelevant and, like everything Neil Reynolds writes (and I read him all the time) pretty much worthless as a model for anything other than ICELAND. Furthermore, your championing of Alcan - a company which came to BC to smelt aluminium (and now seems loathe to actually do that)- which is now Gordon Campbell's putative electricity saviour is really pretty funny. Might be wise to remember that.

And, I'd advise them (the Icelanders) to keep their eye on 'em too - such companies care nothing for anything but the bottom line - a corporation can never, by definition, be a good citizen of any country. It serves another master and cares nothing whatever about the public good.

Hate

GWest

My nephew is neither an elitist nor is he religious. He went with a colleague voluntarily and helped many in need. I will not advise him of your comments. That you dismiss the success of the anti-malaria campaign speaks volumes EDITED FOR PERSONAL INSULTS -- TYEE MODERATOR

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Hermann Hesse

I don't hate anyone

least of all you and your friends - read again what I wrote about him and his efforts:

I have no doubt that there are areas where the malaria infection rate in Malawi has been reduced to zero

and this:

Not for a moment to denigrate your young friend's dedication...

So please, refrain from the personal remarks and read what I actually wrote.

And consult the data I provided - which does not in any way comport with what you're saying about the general case except in that there is a possibility that successes have been achieved in small areas - one of which is, no doubt, where your nephew has been working.

Hate doesn't happen to be one of my methods - truth and honesty, as much as I can manage given the effort I put into it, are.

By all means, I suggest you should share with your young friend as much REAL information about the problems of Africans as you can find. Dedication is no antidote for naïveté.

Belittle, then

I read what you wrote. Did you?

Absolutely not

I don't denigrate Oprah Winfrey either. But if you think one fancy school for a few dozen carefully selected girls is going to solve the problem of literacy among orphans in Africa (or even just in South Africa) then I guess it's also easy to believe that the actions of a few dedicated amateurs are going to turn around the malaria situation in Malawi overnight - an impossibility clearly illustrated in the material I referenced above.

It, like Winfrey's school, is little more than a drop in the bucket. Which is the point I was trying to make; a point which has evidently gone completely over your head while you turn to calling me names for allegedly insulting someone I had no idea was a relative of yours.

You need a thick skin for this kind of debate my friend - a quality you're apparently lacking.

You may think your 'young friend' (later identified as a nephew) is a real hero and I suppose he is in a quixotic sort of way. The problems of the Bill & Melinda way of doing aid are pretty well known. But you may wish to start your education with this document:
http://www.foodfirst.org/files/pdf/policybriefs/pb12.pdf

And, if you really are a Foreign Affairs reader, you must have seen this too:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86103/laurie-garrett/the-challenge-of-global-health.html).