Europe doesn't know what growth is. The United States grows sluggishly. In contrast, the nineteenth-century economy grew dramatically, lifting an entire society out of poverty, lengthening lives, and creating the most advanced society in history. The production of wealth is a continuing job. Taxation, the engine of the transfer machine, must alter market dynamics.
Some economists think a consumption tax leaves incentives in place.
But the very purpose of production is consumption, and the purpose of savings is future consumption. Tax consumption and you tamper with the marketplace fundamentally. Economists like to point to cases, such as the Netherlands, where government spending is as high as 50 percent of GDP but unemployment is not much higher than in the United States. These anecdotes are misleading. To the extent that the entrepreneurial process is stifled, people are worse off than they would have been.