Nullius in Verba

Note: Clicking the Links is important to understand my rambling)

The New Government of Canada released its federal budget this week with much fanfare and progressive words like “achieving our country’s full potential“™ and other such big word terminology.

(Why are they smiling? Conservatives are so green they’re now hitch-hiking.)

Now lets make some things clear before I ramble on. In my humble opinion this budget is, for the most part, a big waste of my money. But then again as the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation (CTF) laments, “Legislators are incapable of demonstrating restraint. [...] And they are also unwilling to return the surplus where it rightly belongs, namely the taxpayers of Canada“

(hey, 24% off, times 5% GST)

The ides of March rolled on, and Imperator Harper managed to wriggle away from the steely knives and duck his way out of something nobody wanted at the moment: a repeat of the 2006 civil war. Many libertarian conservatives watching their blood-money swirl clockwise down the toilet are left thinking Et Tu Brute? But libertarians will always feel that way (more on this later) since from the beginning of time we’ve always been bullied by what enterprising politicians manage to call “What Society Wants”.

(Tower of Babel: What Society Wanted)

Canada’s conscience, CTV newsmedia, seemed to be so bored with this complicated budget that, like a college student sweeping dirt under the couch in preparation for his girlfriend’s visit, they quickly swept it off into a hard to find area on their web page (I challenge you to find it). Then they filled the section with a variety of opinion from people who are usually totally against everything in general. The only memorial moment in CTV’s reporting is from the old weasel, Craig Oliver who is so stunned by the copiousity (word I made up to describe silliness) of the shiny presents that he must have had a hallucination that he was living in the glory days of P.E.T. again and randomly challenged anyone to find anything wrong with the big bonanza (paraphrase).

So WTF does “Society Want?”. Well a recent (and suspect) poll shows:

When respondents were asked what they thought to be the most important issue for the budget to address, social programs were the clear favourite:

• Increasing spending on social programs: 50 per cent
• Cutting taxes: 19 per cent
• Transferring funds to the provinces for their use: 15 per cent
• Reducing debt: 13 per cent.

AND

When respondents were asked whether they thought the claim of a so-called fiscal imbalance was believable, the majority said yes:

• Very believable: 31 per cent
• Somewhat believable: 43 per cent
• Total believable: 74 per cent

• Not too believable: 11 per cent
• Not believable at all: 6 per cent
• Total not believable: 17 per cent

So the CTF just reiterates this truth: “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.” - Alexander Tytler

(I smell sulfur and it ain’t GW Bush)

Anyhow there are quite a few analysis out there on the budget and I’ll get to my point in a minute. First though I have to say that one thing the Conservatives have been doing that the Liberals seem to have a pretty crappy track record on is funding disabled people. However this is something conservatives generally favor strongly. Moreover the Status of Women has its funding back, but it appears that the Conservatives are actually trying to fund real things like shelters rather than silly university professors and other wastes of money.

So anyhow back to my point.

Stephen Harper is probably the most intelligent politician we have had in Canadian politics since P.E.T. and also likely one of the most elegant schemers we have had for a long time. (I do think he is a decent guy with a genuine personality). I guess that basically Harper looked at the way the country was feeling (look up at those polls) and he also pondered on the new Religion of the Kyoto:

Religion of the Kyoto

And its resurrected son Al-Goreacle.

And Harper knew that he had to “head em off at the pass”, to borrow a stereotypical Western phrase (from Westerns not Western Canada).

And so we have a budget that basically fixes the fiscal imbalance, whatever that is, as well as handing out a bunch of money to mystical feel good targets such as the Holy Grail of Global Warming and other fuzzy stuff. Once again the Conservative party of Canada does the real environmental work that the Liberals are always talking about.

(The Greenest Chin Ever: The Leprachaun who laughs last, laughs…
and gets the pot of our gold)

Enraged they are, the Liberals. Deep down inside that particular and peculiar socialist waste of space, Stephane Dion, wishes he could have come out with the exact same budget except with more spending (from where the pot is dry?) and perhaps a lower rate tax cut of 0.5%. However they are so angry that they cannot get any play that they just decide they ain’t playing at all and bail out without even reading the budget.

Guys like Dion plagued the halls of every university I went to, wasting both taxpayer money and tonnes of CO₂ credits along their way to social justice - whatever that is… Because for these guys equality of opportunity isn’t the classical meaning, but rather the equality of some being more equal than others. Its equality of outcome they are after. In other words no matter how much evidence that the unintended consequences of their actions are hurtful, or how BS their schemes they will decide who gets what and how; they are going to make us all pay for it. You’ll see what I mean when I write next about the minimum wage Ontario is considering. However the rats are jumping the ship, because if there really is one thing American that Harper brought to Canadian politics it is the ability to buy out and collude with the other side. And so Cormuzzi (Lib) drawn to the musky odor of the well cooked golden pork promise, burns out like a fly in one of those electic patio zappers as Dion punts him from caucus.

(And then the car goes by and bam, the Cormuzzi. Now go to sleep.)

Because Harper knows that for some reason his party cannot break the 40 percent mark that makes a majority in these parts. Conservatives of all stripes have wandered in the wilderness for so long now that it seems they just aren’t willing to wander in the wilderness anymore. They’ve watched the Liberals feasting in Sodom forever, perched on their high place and enjoying the fat of the land while the Conservatives have had to quench their thirst by beating their heads against the stone of balanced budgets and tax cuts taking whatever scraps that fell from the sky from a stupid media that wouldn’t know the difference between basic economics from NeverNeverLand.

And so they re-forged that old idol, the Paternalistic fatted milk-cow god of Conservative old and towed it out in front of the people to see if perhaps the foolish ones would eat it.

(Party like it’s 1999 B.C.)

But think about it. Can you blame Harper? Lets pretend he came out with a sensible prudent budget. It would be like injecting the Liberals with amphetamines and bringing them a Timmies strong caf. to boot.

Because right now there is so much freaking largesse everyone wants a place at the table or they’ll shriek so loud that Hades will seem like just your average day dull roar.

(There’s enough pork for everyone!)

Stephen Taylor at Blogging Tories, himself an independent journalist, has a series of interviews with several groups, many of whom are not happy with their slice of the pork.

The interesting thing is that the pork got ate all up and still no one is happy. Obviously the alternative would have been to bleed us serfs dryer than Liberal money at the laundromat.

And at last this brings me to my point. No matter what they’ll complain and complain and complain…

Because if they stop then they just won’t have jobs left and so as Milton Friedman once said, “No, you would not become unemployed. You would only have to move to a more beneficial kind of employment”.

Tim Robbins made a low budget movie a while ago called Bob Roberts. For those of you who have not seen it, you should. Basically it is about this right wing guy running as a Senator who rewrites all the folk music protest songs of the 60’s in a sort of counter-culture reversal. All of the songs are clever in that they do have an ounce of truth to them. According to Wikipedia, Robbins’ intentions for the film seem to be less partisan, and more about the political system in general (Roberge 1992).

One of the songs:

Complain

Some people will have / Some simply will not / But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Some people will work / Some never will / But they’ll complain and complain and complain and complain and complain / Like this: / It’s society’s fault I don’t have a job / It’s society’s fault I’m a slob / I’m a drunk, I don’t have a brain / Give me a pamphlet while I complain / Hey pal you’re living in the land of the free No-one’s gonna hand you opportunity.

Except in this case, the people complaining are the ones who are getting grants to fund their complaining.

I’ll examine one part of the budget, the equalization strategy part. Equalization payments are like a mini-cosmos economic study as to why subsidies don’t work. We’ve been funding Quebec for years and they don’t seem to be getting any more equal, in fact it appears they just get less equal all the time - sucking up money like a sponge.

Right now everyone has their nuts in a knot about the next round of equalization payments. Here’s a summary:

Following are the 2007-08 per-capita equalization payments for the receiving provinces with the 2006-07 payments in brackets. (All figures in millions):

• N.L.: $477 ($632)
• P.E.I.: $294 ($291)
• N.S.: $1,308 (1,386)
• N.B.: $1,477 ($1,451)
• Que.: $7,160 ($5,539)
• Man.: $1,826 ($1,709)
• Sask.: $226 ($13)
• B.C.: N/A ($260)

Basically the formula is meant to bring those up to the 10 province average. Danny Williams is as pissed as ever because he doesn’t get to write off 100% of natural resources, and here Guinty is pissed because Danny Williams gets to write off 50%. Saskatchewan is pissed because basically they’re getting more money.

Anyhow this convoluted mess proves one thing. When it comes to “equalization” or social transfers or basically robbing one guy to pay another, you end up pissing everyone off.

Here’s how it should work: No equalization payments. Let people move to where the jobs are. Equalization payments just prop up failure, like any other subsidy. Its been that way since the beginning of time and no one has ever made it work without hurting someone else and enabling people to do unsuccessful things. No one.

In fact what subsidies do is prop up the very people socialists hate: rich fat influential businessmen - because it props up their business.

For example the other day that Jack Layton guy railed on CHRA radio about how we should be both forcing and paying North American car companies to produce efficient cars instead of those crappy heaps they make now.

Excuse me? We should give taxpayer money to Detroit to prop up their failing businesses because they’re too stupid to make cars people want? And the Unions who are too stupid to realize the realities of global trade? (Anyone who wants to learn the theory of how subsidies always result in negative outcomes click here and scroll down to the Impact of Subsidy.)

And you can be sure that Stephen Harper, a trained economist, believes in subsidies about as much as Stockwell Day believes in fossils.

So then what would have been the ideal budget for those budding libertarians?

Andrew Coyne has a great summary of this which has been discussed amongst those who both:

a) care about what happens to people and,
b) are educated in economic theory

I mean would you trust your health to some guy at a store or would you trust a trained doctor more? Why are people so eager to trust politicians who have never read a simple macro/microeconomic theory text? Maybe for the same reason a certain bunch of moonbats only trust witch doctors and quacks.

With half of all the money spent in the last two budgets (11 billion), you could reduce all the income tax rates to 20%. In other words two rates, 15.5% and 20%. Also you could increase the bottom allowable deductable so that poor people aren’t taxed on money they don’t really have.

Yes folks, now ask me, what does more? Letting people spend their own money or having the government do it for them?

To Those Moonbats who are worried that the Government isn’t spending enough:

(StatsCan, compiled by langmann)

(One good thing about the conservative budget is the working income supplement or a “negative tax”which was originally proposed by the genius, Milton Friedman and which I may discuss in greater detail at some point later.)

Update:

(Like I said)

And even after all this, “poll numbers show the majority (55 per cent) of Canadians thought Quebec benefited most from the transfer of funds under equalization, a majority of Quebecers (51 per cent) believe they received less than their fair share.”

Hmmm. Remember what I said about equalization payments? Sure you do.