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Jack Mintz: Our new maximum-cost defence spending strategy

Government procurement that protects local producers raises costs and lowers quality for the taxpayers such spending is supposed to serve

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Milton Friedman, Nobel-prize winner in economics and staunch advocate for free markets, once remarked, “Free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it’s only in the general interest and in no one’s special interest.” Governments should be concerned about the general interest, but they rely on coalitions of special interests to re-elect them and so they often aren’t.

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We see this in the government procurement programs that account for 12 per cent of........

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