Had I been in charge of titling last week’s federal budget, it would have been called something like “Circling the toilet bowl of socialism.” We’re not quite in the bowl yet, but with this budget, we’re circling it. The Liberals instead called their budget “A Plan to Grow Our Economy and Make Life More Affordable,” a far less accurate description, for their policies are exactly the opposite of what they should be if they really want to grow the economy. As a matter of basic economics, to encourage economic growth, taxes must be low, simple, predictable, and broadly applied, in order to minimize distortions and provide certainty. The Liberals have broken all the rules of sensible taxation by making taxes higher, more distortionary, more arbitrary, and less certain.
