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So now we have the “Ontario Fair Housing Plan,” which includes a 15 per cent tax on non-residents. Hey wait. Isn’t that populist xenophobia? Is the premier suddenly channeling Donald Trump?

Heck no. But see the market is “a frenzy” according to Ms. Wynne, who’s such a good economist Hydro One just charged $113.61 to deliver what it openly admits was no electricity at all to my cottage. Plus a 75 cent regulatory charge which is at least 75 cents more than Ontario power regulation is worth.

The new housing scheme will be a brutal failure in practice even if it doesn’t turn out to have loopholes those devious speculators manage to exploit. And it will fail in practice because it’s stupid in principle. It’s true that when some Chinese rich person nastily buys a nice house in a desirable Ontario urban location, it forces some hapless Canadian to accept a windfall they then inflict on their fellows through spending or investment. But in “I Pencil” Leonard Read demonstrated over half a century ago that nobody can know what all the things required to make a humble pencil do cost, from paint to loggers’ coffee, let alone what they “should” cost. Regulating prices with government’s characteristic clumsy ignorance thus inevitably sends harmfully disruptive effects rippling throughout the supply chain in ways the planners could not foresee, cannot understand and are helpless to correct.

Ditto houses. They have no “fair” or “efficient” price other than what buyers will part with and sellers will accept. Admittedly the Ontario government already claims to know what your house should sell for, through the Municipal Tax Assessment Corporation, though they won’t buy it at that price if you ask. So why not simply mandate that no house in the Greater Golden Horseshoe can sell for more than its MPAC valuation, at least to a stinking foreigner?

Because it would be central planning, which we know always causes unfair disaster. So while they devise other central planning to cause unfair disaster, please hit the roof as hard and often as possible especially if you live in Toronto. Putting holes in it with your head will reduce its value. Which your government actually wants.

National Post