Firstly the Adam Smith beloved of free market ideologues is not necessarily the same as the real Adam Smith.

Secondly the US was for at least its first 70-years a low tax economy primarily because for most of that period it eschewed all those expensive budget items like having a real army or navy, a national bank and national debt or much in the way of a federal government at all.

However historically this was because it had no serious enemies on the same continent and not because of any anachronistic devotion to free market principles.

On two big issues – tariffs and slavery – it was in fact a very long way indeed from what was to become classical liberal orthodoxy.

As the perennial debates on the national bank and currency reform that filled the nineteenth century show classical liberal theory was by no means as dominant as you would expect.

After the civil war the US became something a lot closer to a ‘normal’ nation state but even so was still able to get by with a ridiculously tiny army and navy at a time when every state in continental Europe was putting every able bodied male into uniform.

The spoils system being so obviously indefensible and corrupt also placed real limits on the development of continental style bureaucracy at either federal or state level.

I’d be inclined to ascribe America’s remarkable growth rates before 1914 primarily due to its combination of extraordinarily cheap and easily available natural resources, its protectionist tariff policies and last but not least to the vital role the Atlantic slave trade played in fostering primitive capitalist accumulation.

After 1914 it benefited hugely from being able to finance Europe’s wars while expending far less of its own blood and treasure in them tahn any of the other major belligerents.

Had America’s founding fathers and their successors really read Smith and consistently adopted ‘true’ classical liberal policies throughout history then I suspect they’d still be an isolationist agrarian republic restricted to the eastern seaboard.

Also, why exclude the US from this discussion? Surely it became the world’s biggest economy and only superpower by being a low-tax economy built on the principles of Adam Smith.

It may be the case that some economies thrive while having high taxes but the experience of previous Labour governments in the UK does not bode well. The argument was won when Margaret Thatcher came to power, reduced the size of the state and the Labour Party was only able to return to power by embracing most of her thinking.

I would like the next general election to be a debate about the merits of high tax, Scandinavian-style economies vis-a-vis low tax, economically liberal ones, but I don’t expect any clear arguments from any of the main parties on the subject.