The hidden cost of government
Modern western governments are expensive. They don’t need to be but since we did not stop them they are. 25% of Canadian workers are employed by government and they make 16% more than the taxpayers who are forced to pay for their salaries and generous pensions. It is disgusting that taxpayers are forced to pay for this bloated, entitled group who add no value to the economy. Regrettably this unjustifiable payroll burden is only part of the true cost of government.
Government employees don’t do a lot of work but the little that they do accomplish tends to be highly destructive. Government “workers” spend much of their time dreaming up new ridiculous new rules like a plastics registry.
The federal government is looking into creating a national plastics registry that would track the lifecycle of plastic items in the economy.
A plastics registry is a joke but it is not funny. Useless regulations like this impose high hidden costs on the economy. Businesses will spend money to comply with these new regulations just as they are already spending money complying with all of the existing useless regulations. Every new government regulation imposes hidden cost on the economy and these costs are not small. In the US it is estimated that companies spend $3 trillion per year just complying with regulations.
“The NAM’s benchmark Cost of Federal Regulations study finds that the total cost of complying with federal regulations in 2022 is an estimated $3.079 trillion (in 2023 dollars), an amount equal to 12% of U.S. GDP and larger than the manufacturing sector’s entire economic output.”
It costs money to comply with regulations and most of that money is wasted because most of the regulations, such as a plastics registry, are completely unnecessary. I work in a highly regulated industry. When I started almost 40 years ago there were a lot of regulations but if I am truthful most served some useful purpose. Now 40 years later there is an order of magnitude more regulations and almost none of the new regulations serve any useful purpose. In fact many of the new regulations are an attempt to address problems caused by the old regulations.
A sane person would just drop the problematic regulations but that is not how government rolls. Why eliminate the root cause and the incumbent costs when you can impose new regulations that cause new problems that will require even more regulations and more cost?
If we want to save western society we must purge ourselves of government. Not just the professional politicians but most of the bureaucrats and the senseless regulations they imposed must be eliminated. Then we need to ensure the whole cancerous system can’t just rebuild itself. We don’t just need term limits on politicians we need term limits on government employees as well. I would propose a 10 year limit on involvement with government. 10 years and you move on and not to another level of government. You must move back in to the private sector where you get to live with any damage you caused while in government. The new blood coming in to replace you will hopefully fix your mistakes rather than build upon them.
This is not a perfect solution to be sure but it would be a good start. Remember you either put limits on government or government will put limits on you.
