Why Rachel Reeves will keep designing terrible taxes

Isuspect most of us long ago gave up on expecting any humility from our politicians – indeed, the less impressive they become and the more impotent it is clear that they actually are, the more their God complexes seem to flare up. It’s almost like they think humans are characters in a simulator game – like the popular Sims franchise – who can be clicked on and commanded at will rather than rational actors with their own agency. Nowhere is this truer than in economic policy, where the fatal dominance of wonks who think too highly of theory and politicians who think too highly of themselves has resulted in almost no one thinking about how humans actually behave. This helps explain why politicians are so often terrible at designing taxes and anticipating how people may seek to avoid them.