Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Government "Stimulus" Spending Hurts The Economy

Many will think the government “plan” to cushion the Canadian economy from reality will be helpful, but I think not.  Deficit spending simply means borrowing against the future of the citizens of the country and against the wishes of the citizens.  If they want to borrow money they are free to do so to the degree they are credit-worthy and credit is available.  By borrowing, especially in panic mode, the government imposes the will of the few who think they know better on the will of the many who are trying to live their lives as they see fit.

The proper and moral action of the government should be to withdraw its economic stormtroopers from the business of Canadians and let them choose how to earn and spend their own lives and money.  For far too long government has been creeping further into the economy and interfering with freedom of choice in many areas considered, at the time of Confederation, the sovereign domain of the individual.  A shockingly high portion of people's lives is subject to the whims and wishes of bureaucrats, politicians and regulators. 

Canada could become a super-magnet for business and trade by reducing the grasping claws of government and freeing people, especially businessmen, to run their own lives. 

To maximize quality of life requires the greatest production capacity possible whereas taxes punish production.  Why not eliminate all taxes on production and shut down all government interference in production?   If there is to be any tax at all, it should be a small consumption tax.  This would stimulate vast amounts of investment capital flow into Canada, spur a massive rush to start and build business, employ everyone who wishes to be employed and set an example for the rest of the world.  It would be a new industrial revolution.

All so-called stimulus spending is just a crude redirection of otherwise more efficiently spent money.  Governments do not know where money is best spent; freely acting people using their own resources do that much better.  Government action undermines the choices of citizens and forces inefficiency on the country.  It takes wealth from those who produce it and redistributes it arbitrarily among the favorites of the day - whatever government sees as expedient to gain voter support.  In particular it takes wealth from citizens who are the most productive and most valuable (who therefore pay the most taxes) and hands it to the less productive and less valuable. This is supposed to stimulate anything?  It certainly stimulates waste, rent-seeking and a clamor for unearned wealth, pitting citizen against citizen in a war of political favoritism and pressure-group fighting for the spoils of tax policy.

Prime Minister Harper should know better.  He used to speak of these things openly, as a champion of the right of the individual to live a free life and the paramount responsibility of government to protect that right.  He used to advocate for a decrease of government interference in our economy and lives. 

Now, he seems fearful of a craven group of misfits; people he used to oppose with every word.  Now, he has joined them in an orgy of spending he once righteously and rightly condemned.  Now, he has made himself one of them by betraying his once proudly defended principles.  There is nothing left to surrender - our Prime Minister has succumbed fully to the corrupting effect of political power and has become a socialist.

I only hope there is a small voice remaining inside him screaming at the agony of betrayal, longing to be free again, that may one day start reversing the abandonment of core principles.  He could do so by admitting the mistakes of using government force against citizens and being willing to commit political suicide by pulling the life-draining government needle from the arms of our productive individuals. 

I once thought Stephen Harper could be the man to at least begin the process of helping Canada shrug off the burdensome load of government interference, controls, regulations and dictates.  Unfortunately he has clearly succumbed to the drug of political power and differs little from his political opponents and recent predecessors.  What a colossal waste of potential and an end, at least for now, to hope for increased individual freedoms for Canadians. 

No comments:

Post a Comment