"One should doubtless keep an open mind...though open at both ends, like the food pipe, and have a capacity for excretion as well as intake." -- Northrop Frye, 'The Great Code'
Equalization makes us poorer, encourages bad policy and fosters bitterness. Unfortunately we can’t just take it out behind the barn and kill it with an axe. ...
Satirist P.J. O’Rourke says, “Beyond a certain point complexity is fraud … when someone creates a system in which you can’t tell whether or not you’re being fooled, you’re being fooled.” So take Canada’s multi-billion-dollar equalization program … please. It’s so complicated even experts have trouble with it, and regular citizens are excluded completely.
... equalization is arbitrary. Devised with theologian Soren Kierkegaard's "covetous eye on the outcome," it provides dense technical cover for political shenanigans involving billions of dollars.
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis
