Andreas Hellmann: Big Government, Tax Policy & The Free Market
“In Europe you have people who want to break up big companies because they’re saying big is bad and that we need more competition and anti-trust enforcement is so important because we need competition. But then the same people say, when it comes to governments, big is great, no competition & global minimum tax. You can’t have it both ways.”
On the podcast this week we’re back in Lisbon for a brief conversation I had with Andreas Hellman who I managed to intercept just before he went on stage at LibertyCon.
Andreas is the director of outreach, tax, and regulatory policy at Tholos Foundation which is the international arm of Americans for Tax Reform. As a passionate advocate for the free market Andreas speaks critically of the workings of big government and its tax policies. We discuss questions such as:
Why do governments keep getting larger?
What would be the optimum size for a government?
Where do government policies do the most harm?
How much should we pay for governance?
Andreas also reveals the implications of Free City models of large intergovernmental ‘tax harmonization’, a term straight out of the playbook of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in my opinion.
Enjoy the conversation.