It’s the Government’s Fault – Canadian Edition

From Haiti to Illinois to Canada, meet the new boss; same as the old boss.

by Jerry Agar

From Haiti a couple of weeks ago, back to Illinois and now to Toronto, Canada, I see the same thing.  Where we have problems it is often caused – not solved – by government.

In Haiti, as I wrote earlier, it is due to a combination of times of evil government to times of benign neglect.

But let’s take a look at a couple of stories in Canada and see whether they look a lot like the kinds of things that worry the people of Illinois.

There is an ongoing controversy over the cost of public transportation.  The Toronto Transit Commission, which runs the subway, is always looking for subsidies and threatening strikes.  So, how can they save money?

I missed the 6:00 a.m. train by only seconds today.  Turns out it did not matter, as another one pulled in less than three minutes later.  There were only a couple of us waiting when the new train pulled in.  At a few of the stations we stopped at along the way no one got on, as all of the passengers had been picked up by the train that was only minutes ahead of us.  Few people rode my train at all.  I enjoyed not having to wait, but it clearly was not necessary for the train to come right on the heels of the one before it.

I have seen the same thing when I rode the El, especially on Sunday mornings.  Yet a taxpayer in Cairo, who will never ride the train is forced to subsidize extra trains in Chicago.

When I mentioned this inefficiency to a former Canadian politician and prominent businessman, John Tory, he said, “Well you would notice that, and a good business person would notice that, but the people in charge of those things would not.  They have probably not ever even been down there on the platform.”

The front page of Canada’s national newspaper, The National Post, featured a story today about problems with the federal government’s tobacco buyout.  The idea was to pay tobacco farmers $275,000 to get out of the business and to grow something else:

“The Tobacco Transition Program has not worked out that way. In the first season since the government issued those payments, just as much tobacco has been harvested as the year before, and as many as 100 of the farmers who took the buyout still seem involved in producing tobacco.  In fact, federal officials have indicated buyout recipients can legally rent their land and machinery — or even hire themselves out as employees to holders of new tobacco-growing licenses.”

The same type of wasteful “agriculture policy” takes place in America, with subsidies often going to people who are not really even farmers.  The Washington Post writes that, “The payments now account for nearly half of the nation’s expanding agricultural subsidy system, a complex web that has little basis in fairness or efficiency.”

When politicians get involved in the economy they invariably do nothing more than make it worse.  I grew up in farming country, and I know how hard it is.  I feel for those who lose their farms as I feel for those who lose any business.  Entrepreneurs are the heroes and the engine of the economy.  But when their hopes and dreams to do not meet the desires of the marketplace, they must be allowed to go out of business.  Letting the strong survive is best for us all.  The marketplace is always sending messages, but politicians are rarely programmed to receive them.

Haiti suffers now from too little help from government.  Canada and the United States have much more than we need.

The best work that politicians and citizens can do now is to endeavor to get back to a sensible level.  That is the only sane way to balance a budget.