Comment 46370

By realfreeenterpriser (registered) | Posted August 27, 2010 at 07:54:55

dsahota said it best "Your numbers do not prove your hypothesis". It appears that A Smith doesn't like government spending (and probably the sharing of society's burdens through the payment of taxes) and is looking for a justification to reduce or eliminate it. While I have no reason to doubt the figures, they fail to establish any causal connection between government spending and growth or anything else for that matter. Two simultaneously occurring events do not a cause and effect make. In fact, I have no doubt that government spending and the average temperature in Canada have both increased at the same time but (just going out on a limb here) I doubt if they're related.

The analysis is simplistic to the extreme, grounded in the belief that a dollar spend by the government is, somehow, different than a dollar spend by an individual (even offshore) and treats everything as simply a matter of supply and demand. It assumes that all goods and services are "equal" making no distinction between, for example, food, clothes, the HSR and beer (seen any nude, hungry, drunk HSR riders, lately?). Moreover, it lumps all government spending together without distinguishing how it is funded (deficit, taxation, user fees, licensing or a profit centre such as the LCBO) and fails to recognize the virtual impossibility of providing public goods, such as roads, through any other means.

If this type of post has been employed to address other issues in the past, I can understand why it's being downvoted now.

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