When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.
Taxation
Europe’s Brain-Dead Right: Nobody should be surprised if voters also give Angela Merkel and David Cameron the boot at the next ballot.
Readers presumably understand that Europe’s economic crisis is also the crisis of social democracy—of the idea that markets must be made to co-exist with high levels of taxation, regulation, unionization, welfare spending and subsidized health care and education. Eutopia may be nice in theory; it may even work for a while. But eventually social-democratic policies will lead to economic stagnation, policy paralysis and national bankruptcy on the continental scale we are witnessing today.
Film Tax Credits Provide Little or Negative Return
The Globe and Mail ran an excellent piece yesterday by David Campbell on the inefficiency of film tax credits. According to Campbell: "In 2008, this industry generated a negative direct gross domestic product (GDP) in New Brunswick. You didn’t read that wrong. For...
How the Swiss ‘Debt Brake’ Tamed Government: Behold, a good idea from Europe: Spending in Switzerland can’t increase by more than trendline tax revenue.
Americans looking for a way to tame government profligacy should look to Switzerland. In 2001, 85% of its voters approved an initiative that effectively requires its central government spending to grow no faster than trendline revenue.
Featured News
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy!
COVID-19 Emergency Powers Nearly Limitless
The war against the invisible enemy of COVID-19 has unfortunately made normal rights and freedoms invisible as well. Another example manifested on September 13 when Saskatchewan’s premier renewed emergency orders for his province. The list of powers he claimed were so...
How the Alberta Tories can Save $2 billion
The Stelmach government is in desperate need of cash: they can save $2-billion by not funding what is in essence a PR campaign for energy companies.
Five Single Rate Tax Thoughts
The income tax structure has been an area of relatively little public policy debate for most of the previous century. It has been widely accepted that having a hierarchy of tax rates wherein higher levels of personal income result in higher percentage tax rates is a...
Five Thoughts on the Single Rate Income Tax
As more and more nations move towards the single rate tax, Canadian governments too should consider whether multi-rate taxes are an effective way of redistributing wealth, and indeed whether it is even desirable to treat different income differently through the tax code.
Proposed Flat Tax Questioned
The current system of “progressive” taxation, where a range of rates means that higher levels of income result in higher percentage tax rates, may not be worthwhile or effective, contends David Seymour, director of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s Saskatchewan office, in a paper released Monday.
Five Single Rate Tax Thoughts
There is a global trend towards taxing income at only one rate. Today, over 25 nations have introduced the single rate tax and experienced strong economic growth and strong government revenues. No nation that has adopted the flat tax to date has reversed its position, it is time for Canada and its provinces to consider the merits of removing higher tax rates from higher income brackets and adopting a single rate tax.
Media Release – Five Quick Thoughts in Favour of the Flat Tax
The moral implications of progressive taxation versus single rate taxation should be considered for what they are, and it is up to voters to decide whether a system that takes “extra” money from a minority simply because it can, truly reflects their own moral preferences. They should also consider whether or not they truly want a society where the majority uses the tax system to prey on the minority.
How About a New Coalition—To Dump the Bloc’s Subsidies
The Tories, Liberals and NDP should work together to end political party subsidies for all parties—a sensible policy clearly now in their favour but not the Bloc’s.
The Left’s Civil War on Cap-and-Trade: Who Likes Political Capitalism?
Contra Romm, climate policy needs a fundamental mid-course correction. Cap-and-trade should politically die just like the House-passed BTU tax died in 1993. Free-market economic policies that create individual and organizational wealth is the best that politics can do when it comes to the real or imagined challenges of global and regional climate change.
Our Time To Shine
Under the contrasting Harper and Obama plans, Canada looks likely to become in the 2010s what the United States has been since 1980: the English-speaking world’s beacon of enterprise and limited government. Canada now seems poised to collect its due reward.