Flatlining

Remember the National Post's claim that a flat tax movement was about to sweep over much of the world? Not so fast, say the voters who get to make the choice:

While Germans, battered by a weak economy and unemployment rates well above 10 per cent, at first seemed to welcome her economic-reform proposals, their enchantment ended abruptly. As soon as a 25-per-cent flat tax was mentioned last week by Ms. Merkel's outspoken economic-policy adviser and candidate for finance minister, professor Paul Kirchhof, the seemingly unassailable Christian Democrats began falling in the polls.

Yesterday, polls for the first time showed Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his left-leaning allies in a dead heat with her conservative coalition. Her colleagues turned on her yesterday, telling reporters that Mr. Kirchhof's economic ideas have poisoned the campaign...

So dramatic has been Ms. Merkel's fall from grace that tax experts are now saying that, if she loses the election on Sunday night, the flat-tax concept will effectively be dead in the Western world.

We can only hope that the experts are right on this one. But the lie peddled by the National Post (and even picked up by the Globe's headline) is laid all the more bare by the ongoing German election. The flat tax isn't a concept with substantial popular support which simply hasn't been brought onto the political scene. Rather, it's a politically toxic idea which can even torpedo the public standing of an otherwise popular party running against an unpopular incumbent. Even if Merkel manages to eke out a win, it's clear that it'll be despite the flat tax, not because of it.

As for any potential spread of the concept elsewhere, there's little that I'd like to see more than for Canada's Conservatives to try to run with an idea that will get a similar public reception. We can only hope that Harper is just that desperate in the upcoming election.