Greece's Supply-Sider

Wall Street Journal
Editorial
July 6, 2011

Diogenes is said to have traveled ancient Greece with a lantern lit in broad daylight, looking for an honest man. In recent days looking for a Greek politician with a pro-growth agenda has seemed an equally difficult task. But in an interview in this newspaper yesterday, opposition leader Antonis Samaras spoke the honest truth about the government's current strategy of hiking taxes to get Greece back on its feet: It's a failure, he said, and "in three months we'll be asking for more money." Diogenes, call your office.

Everyone outside of Brussels and the IMF, it seems, knows that Mr. Samaras is right. Yet for saying so, and for voting against still more tax hikes last week, he's received nothing but scorn from the architects of the Greek bailout.

Even so, he may get a chance to put his skepticism about current policies into practice—and that might be no bad thing.

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