suffolkowner said:
Thucydides
Everyone talks about reduced spending but I never hear what people are willing to give up. I am assuming most people here (including myself) are not overly excited about reducing the defence budget anymore than has already been done.
There is lots of fat to cut. I routinely receive spam emails telling me there are more than 500 government programs to provide grants and loans to small business. Why do we need 500 different programs to do essentially the same thing? Eliminating 499 sets of program directors, staffs, office budgets etc. is a pretty quick and dirty way to get started. Combing through the government and eliminating duplicate and overlapping programs and their staffs, office budgets and so on would save an unknown number of billions right there. Edward has noted many times there are hundreds of tiny offices in Ottawa who carry out obscure tasks which no one notices. If no one is noticing these jobs, maybe they are not very important. Getting rid of them would save another unknown, but probably significant amount of money.
I am still trying to track down the origin of this one, but I once heard that if the GoC were to close down departments and ministries which overlapped Provincial jurisdiction as outlined in the BNA, that would save @ $19 billion/year. Since the Provinces are already doing these things, it is hard to argue this is a "cut in services".
Transfers to the Provinces could be streamlined by defining what "services" are being equalized, then setting the amount based on the most efficient province for that service (for example, provinces with the highest standardized test scores would be looked at in terms of how much they spent per student. The one with the "optimum" outcome (i.e. scores well against Korean kids, but costs less per student than the other provinces) would set the amount other provinces receive for schooling). Ruthless cost comparisons for transfer payments could cut the costs by a considerable margin. Once again, who could complain because they are getting funded to the levels of the "best" provinces for schooling, health care etc.? (If the receiving Provinces are not getting the same results, then they now have incentive to change things for the better).
As for the idea the Government should be in charge of stabilizing the economy, I agree if you mean via passive means (Peace order and good government, stable and transparent administration of Laws and regulations, the "setting the table" argument). I disagree if you are talking about actrive measures (except in extreme events like war or very large scale natural disasters like BC sliding into the ocean). My historical readings of the "Free Banking" era, prior to governments being able to really manipulate the economy through fiscal and monetary measures (no Federal Reserve, and the First and Second "Bank of America" had both been closed by the Congress) shows that economic dislocations like crashes, recessions and even depressions were of limited effect and duration. Contrast this with the state of affairs
after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Niall Ferguson points out a similar state of affairs existed in England when the Bank of England's powers were more theoretical than real (much like the GG's reserve powers) in his book "The Great Degeneration".
While cumulative cuts on the order of $40-50 billion a year are great, one should note that it would still take over a decade to pay down the Federal debt at that rate, and the unfunded liabilities would take another decade + to cover. So if this was to be a serious plan, it would commit governments for the next generation, something I think would be virtually impossible to do.
