Raise the Hammer

There is NO difference between our major political parties. All of them are socialists/statists and this proved by the fact that they have spent more than 40 cents out of each dollar since 1975. From 1961-1974, when government spending was still less than 40%, GDP/capita growth averaged 3.43%. From 1961-66, when government spending stayed around 30% of GDP, GDP/capita averaged 4.4%. From 1975-2008, as government spending got as high as 54.81% of GDP, GDP/capita has only averaged 1.73%.

If we accept the fact that public freebies can only be delivered if we have a strong and dynamic private sector (in the nineties, there had to be drastic cutbacks in freebies, due to the fact that government spending was between 48%-54% of GDP), then ALL parties should be calling for smaller government.

Alberta, which has the lowest government spending relative to its private sector, also spends the most on health care, per person. It can afford to do this because it also has the highest productivity of any province. Why is this? Well, the main reason is because businesses get rewarded when they do so, by earning higher profits. In contrast, public unions/governments don't care about making profits, because all they have to do is raise taxes.

In other words, the people who run our governments don't have a personal interest in creating productivity. There is no cash bonus if a minister makes his/her department more efficient. In fact, if a minister does become more efficient, it's more likely they will have their budget cut. In other words, government is set up to punish those who think about saving taxpayers money.

To sum up, Canada and Hamilton will not regain their historic economic prosperity if we continue to allow more than 40% of our economy to be wasted by government.


Public spending as % of GDP
1961 0.3113
0.3103
0.3057
0.3008
1965 0.3003
0.3095
0.3318
0.3415
0.3456
1970 0.3671
0.3786
0.3817
0.3685
0.3819
1975 0.4160
0.4097
0.4178
0.4193
0.4085
1980 0.4238
0.4299
0.4759
0.4798
0.4783
1985 0.4818
0.4809
0.4694
0.4618
0.4690
1990 0.4990
0.5352
0.5481
0.5389
0.5152
1995 0.5016
0.4833
0.4600
0.4606
0.4423
2000 0.4255
0.4357
0.4288
0.4278
0.4156
2005 0.4101
0.4109
0.4092
2008 0.4153