What can we learn from the reaction to the Commission on Taxation and Welfare’s recent report? Precisely one thing, and that is about timing. When we look at how governments make decisions, we often assume they are dictated by some messy confluence of ideas, interests, and institutions. Political and individual interests are going to apply at any given time, and a political cost-benefit analysis applies in that moment. Just before he assumed the office of Minister for Finance, then-opposition spokesperson Michael Noonan critiqued a budget saying that it had been fiscally costed but not “politically costed”. Noonan was right.  The Commission…

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