Incentivos perversos

No me canso de repetirlo. El hecho de que en la provincia de Québec aproximadamente el 40% de la población no pague impuestos a las ganancias (por ganar menos del mínimo imponible), convierte en irrelevante a cualquier candidato que proponga rebajas de impuestos y en suicida a cualquiera que propaga recortes de gastos.

Se trata ni más ni menos que de un típico esquema clientelista.

Según Mark Steyn, esa misma situación se va a dar en EEUU si Obama cumple las promesas electorales:

I disagree with my fellow conservatives who think the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Frank liberal behemoth will so obviously screw up that they'll be routed in two or four years' time. The President-elect's so-called “tax cut” will absolve 48 per cent of Americans from paying any federal income tax at all, while those that are left will pay more. Just under half the population will be, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, on the dole. By 2012, it will be more than half, and this will be an electorate where the majority of the electorate will be able to vote itself more lollipops from the minority of their compatriots still dumb enough to prioritize self-reliance, dynamism, and innovation over the sedating cocoon of the nanny state. That is the death of the American idea — which, after all, began as an economic argument: “No taxation without representation" is a great rallying cry. “No representation without taxation” has less mass appeal. For how do you tell an electorate living high off the entitlement hog that it's unsustainable and you've got to give some of it back?