We are, in troubled times such as these, supposed to put everything on the table aren't we? Question not just how government does things, how many people it employs to do so, but also what government does and whether it should even be trying to do it?
Yes, I thought so too so allow me to suggest one of my pet points. We should legalise and then tax drugs: all of them.
This report estimates that legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition...(...)...The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.
We're a little over 1/5th of the US by population and perhaps a little under a 1/5th by GDP: then again we tax booz'n'baccy more highly than they do. The net revenue of such a change would therefore be around the £20 billion mark for the UK budget. That's a pretty handy chunk of change that's being left lying there in the street really, a free feast rather than that free lunch which we're so often told doesn't exist (and indeed, in most versions of economics such free lunches do not exist: we have to add the stupidity and perversity of puritans and politicians to the system to see where they are created).
more...
http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-and-economy/legalising-drugs-in-an-age-of-austerity/
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