Sun columnist Pete McMartin is one tolerant guy. And not because he favours legalizing marijuana.
He calls me up for a quick comment on the City’s bylaw to regulate dispensaries – and instead I give him a half-hour dissertation on the impact of neoliberalism on civic government. And instead of rolling his eyes on the other end of the line (as near as I can tell), he runs with it.
Pete McMartin: Out of joint
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Once upon a time, ideas and innovations poured forth from our senior governments. Now we get bullying and moralizing. In the late 1960s and 1970s, senior governments poured funds into urban infrastructure not just out of an obligatory sense of duty, but to make city life better.“It was a time of incredible optimism,” said Gordon Price, director of Simon Fraser University’s City program. “We’d just come out of Expo 67, and senior governments were doing major funding down at the urban level. And out of that came the structures and innovations we live with today.”
Granville Island. The south shore of False Creek. Co-op housing and affordable housing. Innovations that revolutionized Vancouver and changed the city’s way of looking at itself.
And then senior governments began their long retrenchment. They got out of nation-building and into bookkeeping.
“Call it neo-liberalism, or the idea that government is the problem,”* Price said. “Its core idea was that government was wasteful, and the best thing you can do is cut off its funding and prevent it from innovating and producing new programs. And I think that political philosophy prevailed, won the day, particularly in the U.S. And I also think its effect spilled across the border and became the accepted philosophy of senior governments here. Less government is better. Less regulation. Less funding. The best thing you can do is cut taxes. And you’re certainly not going to get into the business of innovating social programs. In fact, you’re going to de-fund the ones you already have.”
Vancouver saw that in subsidized housing. The federal government (and to a lesser degree the provincial government) slashed its affordable housing programs. The housing problems didn’t go away, of course, so the city was forced to step into the political vacuum the feds had created.
“You don’t leave political voids empty,” Price said. “They get filled, just like in nature.”
The same thing, Price said, is happening today with transportation. The provincial government, rather than take the initiative, deflects Metro Vancouver’s transportation problems by insisting on a plebiscite to fund improvements, the results of which are not binding.
“The cities are going to have to tap their tax base,” Price, said, “and they’re going to have to find innovative ways to do it — which sounds like a good thing, but if the senior governments are getting out of all of this stuff, the cities have to have a more resilient tax base, and they have to have the kind of expertise and political will on a scale appropriate to the programs.”
And what of the issue of climate change, where all of Metro Vancouver’s largest civic governments are in open revolt against the feds’ plans for oil pipelines and coal terminals? In face of the Conservatives’ disgraceful bullying and lack of impartiality, the cities have had to take on the role of opposition.
That’s why Vancouver is going its own way on drug policy, and why, in time, it will lead it. It has had to face up to the realities of urban life as it’s lived now. In the meantime, Ottawa blows smoke.
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* On second thought, “government is the problem” is not the core idea of neoliberalism (horrible word, but academics like it): rather, it’s the belief that political freedom depends on economic freedom – and economic freedom is threatened by the expansion of the state, especially when it tries to intervene in the economy.
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There are associated ideas (summarized in Wikipedia):
… advocates support extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role of the private sector in the economy.
In the Reagan/Thatcher era, the political right found ways to operationalize neoliberalism. The most effective way to constrain governmental excess, they found, was to prevent government’s ability to expand by limiting its access to taxes. And the best way to do that was to make government the target of citizen anger and frustration. Once elected representatives saw that anger translated at the ballot box, they signed on to the most effective strategy of all: Do not get into an argument over the purpose or benefit of additional taxes. Simply state: No More Taxes, and draw the line there.
In order to get people to vote against even those programs that directly benefited them, the argument was refined: If government simply spent better the taxes it already collects, if it managed programs more efficiently, if it eliminated waste and reduced wages and benefits for overpaid bureaucrats, then there would be no need for more taxes. Indeed, the best way to force discipline on government would be to reduce taxes, certainly not to increase them, until some undefined level of satisfactory performance is reached.
Take TransLink, for instance. During the referendum period, the anecdotes of its incompetence were legion, helpfully supplemented by operational breakdowns and the lack of any defenders. Naysayers could justify a No vote by arguing that when TransLink provides a high level of service (presumably without cuts that would negatively impact that average voter), and to do it with less resources, then it could come and ask for that tax increase. No doubt with the support of Jordan Bateman, ha ha.
Which rather misses the point: the purpose was to limit government expansion, particularly of broad-based and tax-supported services, not to provide a justifiable basis for that expansion.
We will see with the outcome of the referendum how well that strategy worked for the No side in the referendum. If No prevails, expect it to be used again.
good liink
Going, going, gone!
Just one quibble:
Our largest problems in Vancouver today, I think many would agree, are housing and transportation. However people on both sides of the divide seem to be missing what liberalism (neo or not) might mean.
We seem to believe that a world where everyone owns a vehicle represents the ideals of a free market. However this is true only if you are operating that vehicle on land you either own or rent. Anything less is purest socialism. If tea party or the CTF really want small government, then that means getting government out of road building (and transportation entirely) and letting the private sector do that where it’s profitable and importantly – *NOT* doing it where it isn’t profitable, and allowing everyone to adjust (walk, bike, livery van, private bus service, etc) as needed. I am forever confused about why this is missed.
Similarly, we believe that home ownership of a single family home also represent some sort of free market ideal. However once again, a real free market would have no rules about what could be built where and wouldn’t be subject to the NIMBY veto unless the NIMBY’s were willing to pay. The tracts of SFH we have today in the region are not market forces at work, they are a glorified cartel, created by the power of the state.
I’m not going to argue that we would or would not all be better off in some sort of idealized free market everything arrangement. I don’t think idealized anything is going to work. But I do find it curious that the free market types think our existing housing & roads are free market results, and the people leaning toward state involvement seem to miss how much state involvement is already here in through roads & zoning.
The biggest issue , not even mentioned by the unionized Vancouver Sun staff writer, is the rising power of the public sector unions and related grossly excessive rise in salaries and especially benefits such as pensions ! If ised to be you got a safe job and a secure but modest pension when you worked in government, whereas in the private sector you got a higher salary but far higher layoff risk and no pension. Today the civil servants get higher salaries AND shorter work hours AND low layoff risk AND cushy benefits AND pensions, often indexed !!
THAT is the core of ” no more taxes ” and the core reason why we have homelessness, crumbling roads and no subways !!
What a bunch of BS. Rising power of the Public Sector Unions? The Conservatives and Liberals have been trying to destroy them with all there might, another example today:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Conservatives+move+push+anti+labour+bill+through+Senate/11170755/story.html
Why don’t you focus your attacks on the corporations who contract out services to avoid paying benefits, receive funding and payouts from governments only to keep the funds for themselves. Why not raise private sector wages?
The key word is “trying” .. unsuccessfully unfortunately. The right to strike still exists for almost all of the public sector employees as well the obligation to not hire replacement worker leaves far too much power fro unions in a monopoly work place situation. The right to strike should be eliminated. Wages need to be frozen, likely for 10 or 15 years to bring them in line with market realities as reductions are against current utterly biased contract.
The crucial issue is pensions. Far too costly for far too long (35+ years often) with far too little contribution by the employee, especially in a low interest rate environment. THAT is THE crucial issue of our days, far more dire than global warming or any other issue facing modern democracies (also see Greece’s, Detroit’s, Quebec’s or Ontario’s debt accumulation .. unsustainable)
Sustainability is social, environmental AND financial sustainability. The latter is often conveniently swept under the (green) carpet as many schemes, such as (subsidies for green energies but especially) government employees’ (indexed) pensions are UNSUSTAINABLE.
To my knowledge they are not even taxed as taxable benefits. So, if a $60,000/year bus driver gets $20,000+ in additional entitlements he should be paying taxes on $80,000, but is not.
Private sector employers compete in the market place. If WestJet, AirCanada, GM or Ford were run like TransLink or BC Ferries, with their excessive wages (bus drivers make ver $80,000/year, transit cops over $100,000, cafeteria workers over $30/h at BC Ferries, ticket booth operators over $60,000/year, etc) they’d be broke broke broke. But they can’t get broke as their owner, the taxpayers of BC are forced by law to bail them out.
Why don’t you open your own airline, grocery store, car manufacturer, coffeeshop or restaurant and pay above market wages ? That is not illegal, you know ? As a successful small-medium-sized business owner, I’d say: Why pay $60,000 a year (unless you are the government, of course) if enough capable folks for $45,000 show up ? Why pay $25/h (unless you are the government, of course) if enough capable folks are willing to work for $20/h ?
Why do so few government workers quit their job ? Because they know they have a good thing going, namely a safe work environment with excessive wages, benefits and pensions for life. THAT is the very issue behind “no more taxes” as our taxes pay for all this excess !
t has nothing to do with “neoliberalism”.
It has to do with COMMON SENSE !
There are still many people that seek people that are stronger than they are to organize their working conditions, earnings, etc. and they seem to be quite prepared to pay an ongoing percentage for this.
Weak and ignorant governments sometimes allow this style of bullying to jeopardize their fiscal integrity by giving excessive funds to cronies and their minions.
We may see a resulting ramification of this profligate spending in the next couple of days. Athens could be in the headlines on Tuesday.
Actually, Gordon, over the years corporate taxes have declined in harmony with other jurisdictions, to remain competitive and keep working men and women employed locally, but personal taxes have concurrently risen. In BC we have GST, that’s a relatively new tax. We have extra taxes for recycling when we buy all kinds of things like electronics and tires, etc., etc. We have very high fuel taxes.
It’s not so much neo anything. Look at Oregon, no sales tax at all.