By the Editor, Ottawa Citizen, April 13, 2015
Economic proposals do not come out of boxes labelled Good or Evil. Their merits
depend not on their intentions but on how they are designed, and what policies
they displace. Imagine, for example, that a hypothetical government proclaimed
that it wanted to bring in a new sales tax. Is that a good policy or a bad
policy? Well, it might be a better policy than some, and a worse policy than
others. To a great extent it depends on the economic and fiscal context, on how
high the tax is, on how fairly it’s implemented, on how its potential bad
effects are mitigated, and — perhaps most importantly — on what other, possibly
more efficient, revenue policies have been discarded in favour of it. via
Editorial: Ontario’s good intentions are just a start | Ottawa Citizen.