Democratic divergence

It's become par for the course: The government continuously pretends it has good reason to toot its own horn while the data, assessments and recommendations would give any other reasonable person pause.

A recent survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the Greek economy was no exception. The Paris-based organization indicated that the excessive profit margins that commerce and industry have learned to work with are one of the main driving forces behind inflation. Price competition, it adds, is lacking in key sectors that are dominated by oligopolies, while new players are discouraged from entering. The survey also says that taxes on capital and distributed profits are among the lowest in the OECD and need to be increased, just as taxes on middle incomes need to be reduced. It further noted that large sections of the population are being...