单项选择题

Conservatism, George Will told me when I interviewed him many years ago, was rooted in reality. It started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. But conservatives now champion ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America’s present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U. S.
Consider the debates over the economy. The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U. S. economy Taxes as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. The U. S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes.
In fact, right now any discussion of government involvement in the economy—even to build vital infrastructure—is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad. Meanwhile, across the globe, from Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth. Of course, American history suggests that as well. In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the U.S. government made massive investments in science and technology, in state universities and in infant industries. Those investments triggered two generations of economic growth and put the U. S. on top of the world of technology and innovation.
But that history has been forgotten. When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this. What we do know is that of the world’s richest countries, the U.S. has by far the greatest involvement of free markets and the private sector in health care. It also consumes the largest share of GDP, with no significant gains in health on any measurable outcome. We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don’t bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory"
Conservatives used to be the ones with heads firmly based in reality. Their reforms were powerful because they used the market, streamlined government and empowered individuals. We need conservative ideas to modernize the U. S. economy and reform American government. But what we have instead are policies that don’t reform but just cut and starve government—a strategy that pays little attention to history or best practices from around the world and is based instead on a theory.
That heavier taxes burden the American economy