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April 27, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
35:41
1897 Taxes, Debt and Disaster - An Interview with Scott Hennig of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

The grim history, present disaster and future of the rather staggering national debt.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I have Scott, is it Henning?
Henning. Henning, Scott Henning on the line.
And he is going to explicate at astonishing levels of detail the issues with the Canadian national debt.
Those of you who thought it was dealt with in the 90s better think again.
Just so people who understand that Che Guevara was not necessarily a nice communist, not that there's many such things, would you like to just explain the shirt so people got a good clear view of that?
There we go! It's Che.
I've got my Che Thatcher shirt on.
It's Che Guevara with a Liberty Bell, overstarched haircut, matronly shoes, and a pension for public union busting.
So I just really wanted to clear that.
Now, before we start, maybe you can tell me a little bit about yourself and your organization and how that all hangs together.
Sure, yeah. My name is Scott Hennig.
I'm the National Communications Manager, but also the Alberta Director for Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
We're the largest taxpayer advocacy group in Canada.
We're 70,000 strong.
We were established in 1990 with the merger of the Saskatchewan Association of Taxpayers and the Resolution 1 Committee in Alberta, which was a group fighting for balanced budget law federally, a law we're still fighting for.
And since then, we've been out fighting what we think is the good fight for lower taxes, less government waste, and more government accountability.
Right. And of course, I'm sure that next up is to try and get Alberta in line with the rest of Canada by introducing the sales tax at the provincial level because I know you guys feel really left out of not being able to even guess how much stuff actually costs at the cash register just by looking at the tax.
So I'm sure that's on the list.
Very, very high, yes. Well, actually, there is a good debate going on right now in Alberta about eliminating our income tax for a sales tax, but frankly, you don't rock the boat when things are pretty good, so we leave that alone, and so do most Albertans.
Right, right. For Canadians, and of course we have an election coming up, and for our other friends around the world who may think in terms of national debt of Portugal, Ireland, Spain, America, Japan, Canada doesn't often make the list when it comes to national indebtedness plus unfunded liabilities, but as far as what I've read, we are in a fairly deep hole and digging with atomic shovels.
Is that a fair way to put it?
Yes. I mean, our debt has not grown any faster in Canada than it did the last two years.
So this year, it's actually...
To be honest, we don't even know how fast it's growing right now because we don't have a budget.
There was no budget passed as of April 1st, so we're guessing sort of based on former projections, but 2009-10, 2010-11 were the fastest two years in Canadian history of the growth of our debt.
They grew faster and larger in those two years than we saw at any other period.
Even when you start adjusting for inflation population growth, We are burying ourselves in debt compared to even during the World Wars.
I mean, most people think, okay, fine, you're going to go into debt if you have war or famine, that sort of thing.
When we did have World Wars, we went into debt very quickly, but it pales in comparison to how fast we're going in now.
And when you do the comparison, you start looking at international comparisons and you make total debt.
And you take total debt to GDP, we're right in the middle of the pigs.
Greece is certainly ahead of us.
They're at like 126% of their GDP in terms of total debt.
You run into other ones like Italy.
I think Italy is right in the high 90s.
But both Spain and Portugal are, I think, just below Canada in terms of public indebtedness as a total of the GDP. We're right around the US. US is right around 86%, 85%.
We're just below them around 84.5%, 85%.
Now, to be fair, the trending lines, though, are moving forward into 2011, 2012, 2013.
If If the government can stick to its real projections of getting us back to balanced budget by 2014 or 2015, we will start heading down while those other countries still head up.
I know. If you can believe this.
Right, right. Sorry, sorry.
I'll try to keep my professional straight face on, but please continue.
No, but that's exactly it.
Last time the government ran temporary deficits, they lasted for 27 years.
That's what happens, is that governments don't balance their budget as often as they do.
It happens. We know that they're not going to balance their budget as often as they will.
And frankly, if things go really well and the government does cut spending and they can actually get things back in order, we'll be doing better than the pigs.
We'll be doing better than the U.S.
But that's sort of like comparing yourself to the worst of the worst.
I mean, so what you're doing, you're doing better than – you're no longer a serial killer.
You're just, you know, you like to beat people up.
I mean, it's okay. Yeah.
All right. Fair enough. You're not as bad as some, but it's nothing to be proud of, really, where we're at right now.
All right. And, you know...
Libertarian-minded people, we're never happy to be vindicated because we always assume the worst from government.
I'm saying we. I don't know if you're a libertarian or not.
Okay, good. So we always assume the worst and we're always told that we are chicken littles running around crying out that the sky is falling.
And we're always right.
And you hate to be right in this kind of – like an oncologist with a – I think you've got cancer.
Damn, I hate to be right but that's the fact.
Because I remember back in the 90s when there was some progress being made towards the elimination of deficits simply because I think it was 30 or 40 cents on the dollar was going just to pay the interest on the national debt.
And I remember everyone saying, ah, you know, you had this doom and gloom thing, but look, they're turning it around and it's getting better and there's no particular problem and so on.
And I said, yeah, okay, so there's a temporary retrenchment because they can't bribe enough special interest groups because they're bribing too many bankers with interest payments.
I knew it was going to come back because the fundamental structural problems of public choice and the bribeocracy of being able to...
Print and borrow money to bribe special interest groups at the expense of the future.
That fundamental imbalance remains embedded within the system, which means you may get improvements in the short run, but in the long run, the trend is always going to return.
Is that sort of what happened in your opinion, or is there something else that I'm missing?
No, you're right.
I mean, we did make some big headway.
I mean, you're right. It was 38 cents of every single dollar back in, I think it was 95, was going to pay just the interest on the debt.
Due to lower interest rates, due to them actually balancing the budget for 11 years, due to them actually paying down $105 billion worth of debt, those were down to around 13, 14 cents.
Now again, a big chunk of that is the fact that we weren't borrowing anymore at 20%, we were borrowing at 4%.
So just, you know, the sheer fact of them refinancing debt got those numbers back down.
But, you know, right now we're sitting still at around $561, $562 billion of debt.
Probably within this next month, we're going to see that cross back over the high watermark that we had in 97.
We thought we'd hit it back in March.
We thought we'd hit the high-water mark of $562 billion, $881 million.
But thankfully, the government, instead of borrowing $45 billion this year, they only borrowed $40 billion.
Thank goodness. So we didn't quite hit the high-water mark yet, but they delayed it by three or four months.
That's all that really happened.
So we basically, in all of two and a half years, we will have borrowed back Every single dollar we paid off in debt between 1997 and 2008, you know, three different prime ministers who paid off debt all wiped out in two and a half years.
And in a way, that's impressive.
And in horrible, you know, like Nazgul filling the sky with their dark wings, it is sort of impressive.
But I think one of the things that people don't get about Canadian history is how rapid the growth of this debt was and how specific it was You know, Pierre Elliott Trudeau inherited a debt of $20 billion, and by the time he left office, it was $200 billion. The interest on that alone pushed it to $400 billion by the 80s and 90s.
So for most of the history of Canada, debt was very small.
Even as you say, there were world wars, there were depressions, there were booms and busts, but the debt remained very small.
With the introduction of very socialist policies in the 60s under Pearson and under...
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, we became a society that could only survive through debt.
I think fundamentally that's because it's very hard to bribe people with their own money because you have to keep a cut.
It's like if I say, I'm going to give you $1,000.
As a gift, but I just need for you to give me $1,500 first and then I'll give you $1,000.
Well, you're not going to feel like it's much of a gift.
And given that democracy, when you get socialized, tends to be about giving people, bribing them with their own money, that only works if you borrow.
Because if you just... Taking taxes and giving people back a portion of those taxes and keeping a chunk for yourself in terms of administrative overhead, it doesn't work at all.
And so borrowing is fundamental to bribing voters, and that really started in the 60s after a century and a half or more of relative indebtedness.
Yeah, no, that's exactly it.
I mean, we really saw the big spike happen under Trudeau in the 70s, and it did.
It rocketed. I mean, there's a video we put up on YouTube that goes through Canada's debt history, and you can see it.
It trends very low, very low, and then it spikes in the 70s, and then it kind of flattens off, and then it spikes again over the last two years.
Legitimately, the government right now – and I don't want to blame the government because it's all – frankly, it is all MPs.
I don't want to sound partisan or anything because we're not a nonpartisan organization.
But legitimately, in 2008, when the conservative government brought forward their economic update, it didn't have – in the fall, it didn't have really any stimulus spending, any deficit projections.
It did have a thing where they killed the party subsidies and the politicians on the other side hated that idea, but they used lack of stimulus spending as they call it.
That's the new euphemism.
Debt spending is stimulus spending, so it's somehow better.
Well, it does stimulate the debt.
Well, it does.
That's all it stimulates, and I can get into that.
But the other parties came forward and said, you're not doing enough stimulus spending, and asked them to borrow, or they're going to take down the government.
So I blame all of them.
I blame every single MP, because I don't think there was a single MP in 2009 that voted against that budget that started this process.
Yeah. Well, I think that's true.
Certainly politicians have a large part of the blame, but I would say that the political impulse to shower bribes upon the Canadian voters is matched equally by the grasping hands of Canadian voters and other voters in the West who seem relatively content to get $2 or $3 worth of services for every dollar that they're paying in taxes, even though we kind of know deep down it's kind of a sleazy interaction and it's harming the future.
I think that we also need to hold up the mirror to Canadians and say we all need to re-evaluate what it is that we expect from government, what we can fiscally reasonably expect to receive from government and begin to look at some of these entitlements and to stand up for the safety of the future and work to reduce this debt now.
So yeah, I think there's a giver but there's also a receiver who's part of the equation as well.
Well, I think two points on that.
One, even at the height of the big economic recession, the Great Recession as they were calling it, which really in Canada was a nine-month technical recession, it was such a minor dip that they could barely even technically call it a recession.
But anyways, regardless, at the height of that, you still had 50% of the population in Canada believe that governments shouldn't be borrowing money, should be balancing their budgets.
But you didn't have a single MP that was willing to vote that way.
So, I mean, I think there was a bit of a disconnect.
Even if it's still, you know, we still might have got outvoted on borrow versus not borrow if it came down to a straw poll of Canadians.
But there still was a huge chunk and there wasn't that voice in Parliament at least pushing back on it.
Second point on that, I mean...
Yes, I mean, Canadians in general get, even without the debt, they get more than they pay for.
I mean, if you look at, you know, the top 10% of wage earners in Canada pay something like 52% of all the taxes in Canada.
So, you know, forget about debt.
Even in general, people should know, and I don't know if they do know, frankly, that, actually, I'm fairly certain they don't know that the top 10% of income earners are the ones who are paying the vast majority of services for the rest of us.
I'm not sure that's something they understand, but it is something.
I think the debt part, they probably do get it.
I think that there is...
This is a very...
This is a very scary future problem for us as those who are going to be paying off the debt become less and those who are going to be driving up the debt are going to become more.
Demographically, you mean? Not contributing taxes, but yet demanding more and more and more services that need to be paid for by someone else.
So either we're going to see massive tax increases or massive debt increases that are just tax deferrals.
Someone has to pay it eventually.
And I think you might end up seeing generational fighting.
Right now we have left-right fighting on the political spectrum.
It could be age-based coming in the near future where you have the massive chunk of the voting population and those who do vote in droves, seniors, demanding more and more services and knowing that they have the political strength, the political numbers, frankly, to make the rest of us pay for it.
And you have people who don't go up and vote, people who are the ones who are the future wage earners and taxpayers who don't vote, who aren't interested and engaged in politics right now, seeing their taxes creep up or at least seeing the debt load creep up and have them have to eventually pay for it once they're getting in their 40s and 50s. seeing their taxes creep up or at least seeing the I mean, I think that we do have a very serious disconnect that once someone figures this out, once the seniors figure out that they can make the rest of us pay,
We're going to pay. And so, I mean, that's maybe getting onto a bit of a different topic, but debt financing is not going away unless we take some real, very strict, strong action very quickly here to ban it, to make constitutional changes, to ban governments from going in debt unless they're in some sort of war situation or massive natural disaster.
Yeah, and I think also, given that Canadian birth rates have been declining significantly, there's also going to be an issue where the government is going to try and make up the tax base through immigration.
And immigrants who have not been part of the system are probably going to feel a bit strange paying for all of these older Canadians to retire in comfort while they're struggling to get their families started without that same kind of history or the social compact or contract or whatever.
That's just a theoretical. But It may be cultural as well as age-related, if that makes any sense, or probably both.
Yeah, no, I think you're right.
I think that the people that are coming to the country – I mean, in fact, I've heard a stat recently that talked about about half, I think, of all new millionaires in Canada are people that have immigrated here in the last five years.
So as their wealth and their economic prosperity grows with newcomers to Canada – Yeah, I think you're right.
I think they are going to be resenting the fact that taxes are going to be going up or debt loads are going to be going up, which again is just deferred taxes, so that they can pay for other people's services.
You're right. You could have new immigrants and young people pushing back against seniors in this country who are going to be demanding more and more services with less and less of their own money.
Now, in America, the debate about deficit reduction, which sounds like you're actually getting somewhere, but what you actually want is debt reduction, not deficit.
Deficit reduction is a good thing, but it actually means you're just going into debt slower.
But there are sacred cows in America that you can't really talk about.
And, of course, the three major ones are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense.
And if Americans aren't willing to tackle those issues, then they're just not going to make any progress.
Everything else is just crumbs off the table.
What, in your estimation, are the sacred cows that Canadians aren't willing to talk about when it comes to the amount of either government spending reduction or tax increases that are going to be necessary to start making a dent to this debt in any meaningful way?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think healthcare is a big one in Canada that people don't want to talk about.
It continues to be the fastest growing sector of government spending.
In many provinces, it's up around 50% of every dollar spent is on healthcare.
No one wants to really talk about that or look at alternatives.
We somehow seem to believe, I mean, I find healthcare funny in Canada because, you know, If you're buying a car, you can go test drive 10 different cars and say, okay, I like that car better than this car.
When it comes to healthcare, Canadians don't know whether they have it good or whether they have it bad.
They've just been told they have it so good.
They assume they've been test driving the best car and no point driving anything else.
Well, in reality, we're driving a beat-up 2002 Chevy Cavalier when everyone else is driving new Lexuses.
Yeah. The US is a terrible example to look at for healthcare, because they're frankly not getting a much better healthcare system than we are.
But the countries that do have very good healthcare systems, like France, like Germany, like Japan, they all have mixed systems.
They all have a private, competitive healthcare system that is competing with their universal coverage.
And they don't have things like government websites set up to track waitlists.
Because there are no wait lists, yet we're here focused on making sure that we have the best new technology to make sure that everyone knows exactly it's going to be 24 months to get your hip replaced.
Well, good for us for putting together a website on that.
Maybe we should try to actually fix it, getting people actually hip replacements when they need them.
That is a big sacred cow.
No one wants to touch it, but I think our court system and I think it's starting to move a little bit.
I remember even 10 years ago when you started asking people We're getting right around 50% now.
So it's moving, but our politicians are scared out of their mind to even talk about it, let alone make any changes.
So we're seeing backdoor changes happen in places like BC and Quebec, where in Quebec's case, it's the courts that have sort of forced it.
But in BC's case, it's sort of been by stealth.
But anyways, that's a big one that is a sacred cow that people don't want to touch.
The other one, too, is retirement ages.
We're starting to see retirement ages change in European countries.
They're starting to move them up.
Now, some of them, they're moving them from 60 to 65, where they were well behind where we are.
But legitimately, when the CPP was created in Canada, the average lifespan was 63 years old.
We weren't expecting people to be living long enough to even collect it.
Now when those numbers are in their late 70s or 80s, we haven't adjusted that retirement age.
Even if you just do the math, if you don't work for your first 20 years of life, you're not contributing to the overall wealth of the country, and you don't work for your last 30 or so years of your life, You're not working for more than half of the time that you need these services paid for.
Someone else is having to pay for it.
That's a sacred cow.
I know that even with our supporters, a lot of our supporters who They know intellectually that we need to do something with retirement benefits.
They're not really that willing to look at increasing the retirement age, which is something that we have to talk about.
And the longer we wait, the less likely it's ever going to happen because there are going to be 30%, 40%, 50% of the population, people who are of retirement age, and they're never going to want to change that.
Well, and of course, it has to be a forward-looking policy because you can't move the goalpost for somebody who's three days away from retiring.
There has to be a grace period.
And of course, as you say, if more people are thundering over that retirement bulge, moving the goalpost afterwards doesn't make nearly as much sense.
No. What about education, welfare?
I know Canada's military spending is relatively low, though we are bogged down in these ridiculous wars in the Middle East.
But are there any other sacred cows that you find particularly sensitive with people?
Welfare has been pretty controversial in Canada, less so than in the United States, but more so, I think, than in other countries.
But are there any other areas where people just won't go to look at cuts?
Yeah, well, I would say that another form of welfare, equalization, is one that no one wants to touch.
Sorry, just for our non-Canadian or non-up-to-the-boring-Canadian-politics-speed, equalization are payments that are designed to take from the half-provinces, in other words, those who are above a certain fairly arbitrary line, skim money off them and give it to the half-not provinces.
I think, what, are we down to two half-provinces now and eight who are on the take?
Yeah, I think it's just Saskatchewan and Alberta right now are haves and everyone else is have-nots.
I mean, Ontario, that's the scariest part of this whole thing is that we have a third of our population considered to be a have-not province now, which was our economic engine for decades.
So that is frightening for the future.
But Regardless, I mean, I think there is, there's a view in certain provinces, I mean, actually, there's a view in quite a few provinces that they either hate it, like in Alberta, no matter what happens, they think that they're getting hosed and they want this ended.
And then you've got a bunch of Atlantic Canadian provinces who view it as being sort of a birthright, that it was part of a right of joining Confederation.
I mean, they actually do view it as this was a deal for us to join the country as you agree to pay this.
Yeah, I know. I mean, if you're bribed into something, that bribery has to continue.
Otherwise, it becomes immoral.
Anyway, sorry. Yeah, well, that's exactly it.
So breaking that, I mean, here we view it as a government program, and government programs are to be changed and switched and moved and altered.
In some place in the country, it's viewed as a fundamental right, like a human right of some sort, and that is very hard to break.
And we've got I think you're starting to see the seeds of some pretty significant jealousy growing.
Quebec is a good example.
When you have $7 a day daycare, you have basically very cheap or free tuition at universities.
And a lot of that is because they're getting fairly generous equalization payments.
And you have people who are...
In Western Canada, who have largely been paying some of those, or even in Ontario, who have been paying some of those payments, who don't have $7 a day daycare, who don't have some of the highest tuition for universities in the country.
Granted, still 75% of it's covered by government, but anyways, we forget about that little part of it.
But anyways, there is starting to be those seeds of jealousy pitting different parts of the country against each other, but It's a big chunk of money.
It's a good chunk of money that we, as an organization, we've been pushing for them to start replacing equalization payments with debt repayment matching programs.
So if New Brunswick wants to pay off their debt, well, then the federal government will match any debt repayment they make so that they can start cutting back on their interest payments and actually get themselves out of some of these holes.
But we have created a welfare wall.
When I was in New Brunswick for their budget, it was amazing to look through their documents and see that every single time they're trying to become more self-reliant and independent, so they're cutting spending, they're raising taxes, they're doing these things that make them unpopular as a government.
I mean, no government likes to cut spending or raise taxes, but every time they do that, they see their transfer payments go back down, and they're not really getting any further ahead.
They're becoming more self-sufficient, but...
As a politician, really, are you benefiting?
Are you gaining friends?
Are you going to be getting people voting for you again because you're making hard decisions but you're not getting yourself any further ahead?
I mean, that is a huge welfare wall that we've created for these provinces who we've got addicted to transfer payments and equalization.
So if they try to balance their own budget, they simply get less money in these equalization payments, which means that it's like the guy on welfare who wants to get a part-time job.
But it's just going to cut his welfare payments, so in a sense, what's the point, right?
Exactly. That's exactly it. We've created our own welfare well when it comes to our provinces.
A question that I have...
I was a libertarian and a minarchist for many years, and I have, over the last few years, made the transition to looking at the possibility of a stateless society.
Don't mean to shock you. And the reason for that is...
How, okay, I can't find any way past the incentive problem and, of course, the initiation of force problem around taxation.
But you obviously have a good deal of enthusiasm and I would imagine a fair degree of optimism about what it is that you're doing.
And, you know, share with me some of those drops of blood so that I can feed from them.
But help me understand how, given the Structural problems, given the lack of education that people have about basic economics, given the public choice problems, given the concentration of benefits versus the diffusion of costs problem and the demographic problem and the immigration problem and so on.
Where do you think it's going to go?
And I don't mean to impugn the work that you're doing, but if you had to sort of roll some money on the table for where you think it's going to go, what's your prediction for how Canada's going to move forward in terms of whether it's going to tackle this debt or not, or whether there's going to be not exactly a Weimar-style hyperinflation, but some sort of either a default or some sort of more wrenching change?
Do you think there's going to be proactive, or do you think it's going to be reactive?
Oh boy. Well, I mean, look, I am an optimist, but I'm also a realist.
And ultimately, I do fear that we're...
I fear that we were, just in the last couple of years, watching how quickly people were able to turn their brains off and start to believe that Keynesian economics was somehow the savior when we know that all of the...
When we...
We know that all of the freest, wealthiest, most prosperous people in the world are living in countries where freedom and economic freedom, particularly not necessarily political freedom, but economic freedom has been paramount.
Think that ultimately we have enough countries around the world that we could point to as this policy didn't work, this policy did work, this policy didn't work sort of thing.
I mean, we can always point to Hong Kong and say, look at Hong Kong.
It's this little speck of dust in the middle of nowhere that has no natural resources, but it is free and the people are the wealthiest and most prosperous in the world there because of the laws they have not put in place.
Because of the social programs they have not put in place and the way the government has acted.
Now, granted, a non-democratic country, but still one of the freest, most prosperous places in the world.
I think that as long as we can continue to point to examples of that, of look, they didn't buy into some Keynesian massive government expansion program.
And other countries have, and look at how they're failing.
I think we're going to be okay because ultimately people will inherently, I think, know that freedom beats tyranny.
But maybe I'm just an optimist on that, but I mean, there isn't an example.
There is not an example in the world, in the history of the world, where massive socialism and communism has led to the betterment of standards of living and people.
So Until they get a win, until the utopia in this world is a communist nation, I still have hope that the right-headed moves will be made.
And you know what? It's going to be incremental and it's going to be a constant fight.
And every single time Keynesian economics and bad policies pop back up, we're going to have to jam Hayek down their throat and remind them.
And we didn't do it. We didn't do it.
We got beat two years ago.
When everyone got on the Keynesian bandwagon and we weren't expecting, we thought they knew that balanced budgets were important and that you can't borrow your way to prosperity.
But we underestimated the power of the simple soundbite and we didn't do it on our side.
So we must remain ever vigilant.
Well, I agree that collectively you can't borrow your way to prosperity, but I would say that there's probably quite a large number of American bankers who feel that the stimulus package was very profitable for them, right?
It's the concentration of benefits and the disbursement of costs that is so tragic in this kind of system.
And I agree with you. Keynesianism has been discredited very many times, but it is...
I remember Hayek wished that he had written more of a rebuttal.
I think it was to the general theory of unemployment or whatever, where Keynesianism...
Oh, if only I'd written that rebuttal.
And it's like, I don't believe that was the case because it was so useful to the political class to have a justification for increased spending that they would, you know, even if there'd been some great rebuttal, they still would have championed it.
And it is such a great excuse for politicians to spend money, which is what they love to do because it gets them elected and keeps getting them elected.
So I agree with you that there is a war of ideas, but the war of Pragmatic pillaging of the general body politic is, I think, a little bit more immediate to people.
It is. And I mean, just again, look at the stat of, you know, whatever, top 10% of the population pay 50% of the taxes.
As long as we can make someone else pay for our services, we will.
You know, but, you know, I'm a Randian and eventually you're going to choke that golden goose and they're going to walk away.
And they've done it in many countries.
And as long as we continue, I think, to make sure people understand how, well, I Maybe we need to start making people understand where wealth is created and how prosperity is created.
We need to do a better job of it.
Part of that is the education system.
I think that we definitely need to force a lot more of this type of information through our education system.
Despite the fact that...
Probably you, probably me, all of us who know the difference between right and wrong, were not taught this in school.
We somehow found it. Because I think it is the natural order.
It's the natural way that things work.
And you can't fight it.
It is going to come through no matter what in the end.
But incrementally, we are going to lose some.
We're going to lose some, but we need to look at the big endgame.
And I'm still very hopeful of the endgame.
Well, I agree with you. I think that freedom and prosperity and peace will triumph in the long run, and certainly what lies ahead for Western democracies is nowhere near as bad as what lay in the 20th century with grinding fascism and national socialism and communism into the dust.
We're not going to be talking about...
10 million dead in one war and 40 million dead in another war.
It's not going to be anything like that.
And of course, we do have this amazing communications medium, the Gutenberg Press of our modern-day Christendom, which allows, I think, the dissemination of ideas in a way that was very hard before.
So I think that we're well poised.
I think it's going to be a pretty rough transition.
It's going to be a pretty hard bounce because I think that we are beyond the point where people are willing to learn with ideas because their economic and immediate self-interest is so bound into the existing system that They may pay some lip service to ideas, but we are mammals who want to eat and who want to sleep under a roof.
So I believe that, yeah, it will.
Truth, reason, peace, prosperity, free markets and so on will absolutely win out in the long run, but I think it's going to be a pretty rough transition.
You're right. When we have so-called free markets being interfered with companies that are too big to fail and that sort of thing, when we continue to allow basic market functions to not function, You know, failure is a very blunt instrument.
I mean, the free market is a very blunt instrument.
It's not pretty. But it is absolutely necessary.
And should we let the banks fail in the U.S.? Yes.
Should we let the car companies fail in Canada and the U.S.? Yes.
We should have let all those things fail.
And you know what? There would have been a very significant short-term pain for many people.
But over the long run, everyone would have been better off.
And convincing politicians of that is...
It's going to be difficult, and convincing those people that are going through the pain is going to be even more difficult.
But as long as the majority are not going to be the ones who are hit by this or at least see the endgame, we'll be okay.
But we're going to have short-term losses.
We just lost the last three years.
We're going to have some more short-term losses in terms of becoming a freer world.
I mean, the US just dropped how many points on the Freedom Index over the last couple of years.
I mean, it's going to happen.
It's going to happen. We're going to see some failures.
But again, we know it's going to win out.
So I'm happy to keep fighting the good fight and try to make some incremental gains.
I think there's a little bit more heroism when things look darker than when you're on the upward swing.
So, you know, Yay for us.
And so listen, I want to make sure that listeners get your website and your organizational name so that they can go and contact you if they have a little bit more hope in the system's rehabilitativeness than I do.
So if you'd like to give those up.
Yeah, for sure. Our website is taxpayer.com, T-A-X-P-A-Y-E-R.com, where the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, you can get our emails.
Don't cost you a thing. Get on our website, sign up for our emails, and start joining the fight.
Thank you so much, Scott. I really, really appreciate the conversation, and I wish you the very best of luck.
No, thanks. Thanks for having me. My pleasure.
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