Less boom, less bust
Oui, France`s taxes and bureaucrats are a burden, but its safety net now looks very appealing
"You know, there`s two schools in economics on this. One is that there are some good taxes and the other is that no taxes are good taxes. I`m in the latter category. I don`t believe any taxes are good taxes."
So said Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, when I interviewed him at the close of July`s Group of Eight summit in L`Aquila, Italy. Intent on racing through more topics-I was allotted only about 10 minutes-I rolled on to the next one. If I`d had my wits about me, I would have grilled him.
Are you a closet anarchist, Mr. Prime Minister? How would Canada function in your low-tax, or no-tax, paradise? If taxes are evil, how do you explain the success of high-tax countries such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden and fellow G8 member France? Am I correct in assuming that you think the (low-tax and now vilified) Anglo-American economic model still has legs?
I suspect that Harper, numb after three days of endless meetings, wasn`t thinking any more clearly than I was. Every country has taxes of some sort, so presumably he agrees that if they are evil, they are a necessary evil. But he didn`t say that. You can also bet that if he were appointed global minister of nation building, he wouldn`t invent a high-tax country like France, and that many free market economists and politicians would take his side.
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