Don’t blame the politicians. Blame us
Politicians are in perpetual campaign mode; budgets are at the breaking point; everyone gets handouts; core responsibilities are neglected
What is it about government budgets? Why with all the partisan sound and fury are they so similar in content and rhetoric? The politicians don’t mean to do it or know they have. So who’s writing these things?
It could be Anthony de Jasay. He’s a Hungarian-born economist and political philosopher with no public post. But his 1985 book The State predicted the current situation with uncanny precision.
The State isn’t exactly a smooth read. But it’s an important book, because it sets out to imagine political life from the point of view of government, a sprawling, messy corporate entity full of self-interested people confronting voters who are “political hedonists,” that is, who understand good government to mean government that gives them stuff.
Competition among politicians seeking power and prestige, de Jasay argued, would lead them to promise ever more attractive benefits to an ever-wider electoral coalition while alienating as few people as possible. And public servants seeking salary, security and troublefree days would implement and refine those pledges.
It might sound like a happy result for all concerned, if not an elevated one. But de Jasay saw two long-term problems. First, the more perfectly the vote-buying operation squeezes out a surplus and redistributes it, the harder it becomes for politicians to devise more attractive offers. Second, because redistribution hurts prosperity, the surplus gets smaller as demands on it get greater. Thus de Jasay vividly depicted the state on an accelerating treadmill, with politicians and public servants unable to get off or keep up.
Certainly a majority of voters are political hedonists. As Bill Watson recently wrote, his university rates budgets every year on how much money academics get, and while we laugh at “What’s good for Gen- eral Motors is good for America,” almost everyone now thinks that way. Even the design professionals are loudly squawking that the federal government didn’t treat the 150th anniversary celebration logo as a significant investment opportunity, that is, a chance to give them a lot of money.
That’s why the supposedly freemarket federal Tories spray us with press releases boasting of handouts to every imaginable recipient from snowmobile clubs to cheese factories to parents of kids in art class, while their latest budget promises spending will rocket up by a fifth, or $50 billion, in just five years. They mock big-spending Liberals, but hey, if you voters want loot, we’re not just willing but desperate to gut defence to subsidize blueberry farmers, laminate makers, parents and everyone else with their hand out.
I don’t say politicians are cynical. Rather, a filtering process in modern politics and bureaucracy excludes, marginalizes or removes all those not comfortable in this environment.
The Ottawa Citizen reported that “Finance Canada is failing to properly manage billions of dollars in tax credits … and, in many cases, does not know if they are relevant, effective or achieving the government’s goals, says the federal auditor general.” Which would be true if the goals were economic or social. But the goal of politicians is to get re-elected and of bureaucrats to keep politicians and citizens happy. And from that point of view, the credits are skilfully managed and carefully monitored.
A related Globe and Mail headline said “Transparency urged on Tory tax credits.” But while the Tories are keen on these things, according to the Fraser Institute, “Federal income tax regulations have grown from 547,000 words in 1955 to 5,788,000 words by 2005.” The treadmill’s been running for decades.
The Liberals and NDP sincerely accuse the Harper ministry of pandering to the rich. But they’re sincerely out to lunch. This is vote-buying at its most refined and the rich just aren’t that big a constituency. As a recent study by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute shows, the system redistributes income from the top 40 per cent, mostly the top 20 per cent, to the bottom 60 per cent. If Mulcair manages to jump onto the treadmill, he’s in for a nasty shock.
Pundits largely agree the Harper budget is carefully tailored to win votes. But if budgets across the country and the spectrum are eerily similar, it cannot be due to federal Tory personality or political defects.
It’s easy to deride a headline like “Services at breaking point, PS says,” given public sector salaries, pensions and job security. But governments everywhere are stretched perilously tight.
Politicians are in perpetual campaign mode; budgets are at the breaking point; everyone gets handouts; core responsibilities are neglected. You can kluge it by borrowing up to a point, but once interest payments start eating into the boodle it speeds up the treadmill even more.
The problem isn’t failure or incompetence. It’s brilliant success in the unsustainable venture of handing out more than there is in return for votes. And no one can stop the treadmill … except citizens.
You see, at bottom, it’s not politicians writing budgets, or Anthony de Jasay.
It’s us.