Fiscal Conservatism

Written by: Justin Yusuf Hertwig
As a fiscal conservative, I feel that the money that the government spends belongs to the people, and they should spend as little as possible while providing the services necessary. I have been really disappointed in the Harper "Conservative" government. After 11 straight years under Chretien and Martin of budget surpluses and paying off the national debt, this so-called "Conservative" government has turned the tides and is now posting massive deficits and accumulating tens of billions in national debt. In fact, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Harper government has increased government spending by a whopping 42%!

Now, I understand that Keynesian economists will say that due to the recession, increased government spending (known as "stimulus spending") is necessary, and we can debate the merits of stimulus spending until the cows come home. I'm actually not sold on either side of the debate, and each side sites the same historic examples to prove opposite points. But let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that the Keynesian economists are correct and this stimulus spending of government make-work projects is to our benefit. The "Conservative" government could have slashed unnecessary spending and potentially created new sources of revenue.

For one, pull out of Afghanistan. The Afghanistan mission is projected to cost the Canadian government $18 billion, and for what? To support tyrannical warlords and a corrupt federal government? Pull out! The war is costing us more than just billions of dollars, it's costing us human lives, and human life is priceless (although some governments seem to think that "priceless" means "worthless). Since we've been in Afghanistan, things have gotten worse, and the longer we stay, the more the battle heats up. That place is a quagmire. The sooner we pull out, the better off we'll be. Save lives and money.

End the war on marijuana. It's unclear the exact cost of policing to fight this herb, but with the thousands of helicopter crop fly-overs across the country, the incarceration of marijuana users, and the court (and legal aid) fees for prosecuting marijuana dealers and users, it seems that we could save a lot of money by giving up this losing war which seems to cause us a lot more harm than good. Sure, smoking pot makes people act kind of dumb, and impairs their coordination so that they certainly shouldn't be driving or operating heavy machinery, but the war on pot has been completely ineffective. In fact, it's much easier for minors to acquire marijuana than it is for them to acquire alcohol. Go to any high school and find out for yourself. The war on marijuana hasn't affected the supply, except for the occasional and brief drought, which is used by drug dealers to push other, more dangerous substances on marijuana smokers: "I don't have any pot right now, but I have some cocaine". The sooner the proponents of marijuana prohibition realize that they have lost the war, the better off we will be. Besides, it's awfully hypocritical for the government to distribute a much harder and deadlier drug, alcohol, while incarcerating people for distributing a plant. And don't turn around and say that we should ban alcohol because it's more dangerous than marijuana. We tried that once, and it was a disaster. Read up on the history of prohibition and how people drank even more and criminals got rich.

So since the war on marijuana is such a waste of money, and we could save money by legalizing marijuana, how about the government turns a profit on marijuana by taxing it? As a libertarian, I don't like the idea of the government regulating or taxing marijuana, but I'm a debt and deficit hawk sooner than an absolute libertarian (call me a pragmatist) and I see a great potential source of government revenue. Canadians smoke more Marijuana per capita than the people of almost any other country in the world (we may be beat out by Micronesians)! We could very well eliminate the deficit by legalizing and taxing Marijuana alone.

For even further savings, we could legalize and tax all illicit substances. The war on drugs as a whole is a failure. It was a pipe-dream of progressives that we could control human behaviour and the nature of markets the way in which we try. Take the money out of the coffers of the gangs, thugs and criminals and put it in the hands of the government. Doing this, we can offset the costs of drug abuse on society, and invest more money (created from drug revenue) in support and rehabilitation programs. This is the attitude we take towards alcohol and tobacco: why not meth? We could sell these substances from secured booths in the already existing liquor stores, or methadone clinics. I'm not denying that these drugs are a scourge on society. I'd imagine that growing up in a home with drug-addicted parents could be terrible and filled with poverty and physical and sexual abuse. But this happens already, just with parents more dissociated from the government because their addictions could wind them behind bars. It also happens already with alcohol. Alcohol ruins families. Still, prohibition doesn't stop drugs or alcohol from ruining families, and prohibition itself can ruin families. Think of all the money we'd save if we didn't have to keep on trying to track down drug dealers and meth labs, and imprisoning these people once we find them.

Legalize, regulate and tax brothels. Prostitution itself is already technically legal, but all of the activity surrounding it is illegal. Nevertheless, in its current state, we have abusive and exploitive pimps luring young women into a dirty trade and taking the bulk of their earned money for "protection". Prostitutes wouldn't need protection if we legalized brothels so they could perform their trade in a safe setting. Once you do that, you can regulate prostitutes to reduce the spread of STDs. Nevada has a really good model for this, currently. And if we know anything from marketing, it's that sex sells, and people sell sex, so if you tax people selling sex, you can get a lot of government money. Let the government be the pimp - at least we could reduce the deficit and provide the prostitutes with REAL protection. We could also help struggling young girls find real careers. The prostitutes are really the victims in this game. We should be helping them, not locking them up.

Well, that's just a handful of ideas that real fiscal conservatives and debt & deficit hawks could be considering. I don't condone any of the activities that I've suggested legalizing and taxing; to the contrary, I would advise against them strongly. However, I feel that it is not the government's position to mandate activities based on what is morally right or healthy for the individual; the government's job is to maintain order and maximize freedom. We should have laws against hurting one another, but we shouldn't have laws against hurting oneself. Does anybody disagree with any of these suggestions? I'm particularly curious if anyone disagrees on a fiscal level rather than a moral one, but I'd be interested to hear moral disagreements, too. Also, does anybody have any other suggestions to reduce the deficit?