Canada’s tax rate on corporate profits has fallen by more than 14 percentage points since the turn of the century, to just 15 percent this year. In Denmark it has shrunk to 22 percent from 32 percent over the period; Britain’s has declined to 19 percent, from 30 percent; Ireland’s to barely 12.5 percent, from 24 percent. Hungary’s is even lower.

What happened was globalization. As multinational corporations have hopscotched around the globe to find the most profitable base from which to run their affairs, they have set off furious competition among governments hoping to lure investment by slashing tax rates to the bone.

Smaller countries like Ireland or Hungary have been the most aggressive in this race. But big industrial powers have followed, too. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the policy think tank of the world’s industrialized countries, almost every one has reduced its corporate tax rate over the last 17 years.

There are two exceptions: Chile and, alone among the world’s wealthy nations, the United States.

In the United States, the federal tax rate on corporate profits is stuck at 35 percent — the same as 17 years ago, and more. This inability to adapt to economic reality is a signal of the impossibility, in the United States, of pragmatic, sensible tax reform.