It is widely agreed that if Canadians don’t start focusing more on productivity and prosperity, we’re going to be in a heap of trouble strategically as well as economically. But headlines like “prepare for a decade of thrift and lower living standards” underline the familiar problem of trying to fight an enemy with outposts inside your own head. We’re so certain ever-bigger government makes us healthy, wealthy, and wise that when it makes us ill, poor, and baffled, we think yeah, we can’t afford to spend but we also can’t afford to cut. So the usual political incentives keep us spending, wildly.
You see this problem in the lax fiscal performance of governments of nearly every stripe nearly everywhere. But even more in the way their tongues praise fiscal prudence while their hands mock it.
