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Birth of a Boom: Saskatchewan’s Dawning Golden Age by Frontier's David Seymour
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(FB024)
April 14, 2004

In Flanders’ Fields the Transfers Grow

Executive Summary
  • Once a unitary country, Belgium has divided itself into federal regions.
  • The country has attempted to equalize conditions in the relatively more prosperous north and the relatively poorer south with a series of transfer programs.
  • The transfers are based on several factors, the most important being income tax revenues and social security levies.
  • Rather than spreading wealth, the perverse incentives contained in the transfers have encouraged politicians in Brussels and Wallonia to expand spending and regulatory programs.
  • The transfers have failed to equalize economic conditions; rather, they have widened gaps in standards of living and employment levels.
  • Once touted as a tool for reducing separatism, equalization has instead intensified the trend.

    • Pdf format - 4 pages

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    Related Items:

  • More international experiences with equalization - Frontier Backgrounder 25 - Sweden's Equalization Milk Cow
  • More international experiences with equalization - Frontier Backgrounder 26 - The Tasmanian Devil is in Equalization's Details
  • More on equalization. . .
  • Visit the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies website for more research on equalization

    Author's Picture Olivier Doms works for the Belgian Parliament as an assistant. He has studied Romanic Philology at Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis in Brussels. He is working on a book on libertarian philosophy for French speaking people.


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