Who Spends More, Left or Right?”, a report from the Montreal Economic Institute by by Michel Kelly-Gagnon and Vincent Geloso. In an analysis of spending per GDP in Quebec, Canada, and the U.S., they found that “In reality, there is no systematic relation, for any of the three governments, between the left-wing or right-wing ideologies of the parties in power and the evolution of public spending as a share of GDP. In all three cases, it is actually left-wing governments that most reduced the relative size of government, and in one of the three cases (the United States), it is a right-wing government that most increased it.”

NB: I have only glanced at this and am not vouching for the methodology or the result. But it seems plausible; the result in the U.S., at least, has been known for quite a while.

Libertarians often get taken in by words from conservatives, and many avow that we should prefer conservative government because conservatives at least occasionally talk about cutting the size of the state. But talk is all that it is. They do sometimes cut benefits to the poor– and because such benefits are justifiable under some theories, sometimes libertarians seem to emphasize cutting them with a little too much enthusiasm. But completely unjustifiable spending, spending that redistributes upward and that keeps crony firms alive and that overspends on defense and so on, is spending, too.

Given no systematic change in the amount of state spending, I’ll prefer spending that is more progressive over spending that is more regressive. Hence, an urge to break the fusionist alliance with the right, and hence BHL.