A nasty Brown mess

From 'The Economist'

JEAN-BAPTISTE COLBERT, Louis XIV’s finance minister, famously said that the art of taxation was like plucking a goose; the aim was to get the most feathers with the least hissing. But tax policy should aim to do more than smother protest: it should also seek to raise the most money with the least distortion to economic activity.

By this measure, Britain’s attempts to fill the fiscal gulf created by recession are a dismal failure...

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