Reformers At Loggerheads

Surely I can't write today without mentioning Dave Camp's tax reform draft, which will presumably go the way of his colleague Max Baucus’s equivalent drafts. That two such intricately crafted prescriptions for a future US tax system will fall victim to bi-partisan politics may seem an indictment of democracy as she is practised nowadays, and indeed the Economist asks this week whether democracy is failing us. Of course it concludes, as did Winston Churchill, that democracy is a bad system – but that all the others are worse. Democracy suffers from its reliance on the level of education of voters, which is still far below what it would be in an ideal world. But ask this question: are the bulk of voters better or less informed today than they were a hundred years ago?Read More »