Saturday, January 24, 2009

What we need is leadership, not gigantic deficits - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA

What we need is leadership, not gigantic deficits - Brantford Expositor - Ontario, CA: "ADDING BACK THE DEBT
Over the next six years, the budget office estimates, we could easily add back the $105 billion in debt that we dropped between 1997 and last year. Canada's debt-to-GDP level, the economists keep repeating, is the lowest in the G-7, at about 30 per cent. Not for much longer.
Here's the amazing thing: Nobody cares. Not the Conservatives, not the Liberals, and of course neither the New Democrats nor the Bloc.
They all want Harper to spend, spend, spend. Indeed, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has indicated that if Harper doesn't borrow and spend enough, he'll invoke the coalition and topple his government."

And it's not just them. Most nominally conservative think tanks, and all the economists, are singing from the same song sheet. Their mantra: Canada is in a sound position fiscally, relative to the rest of the G7. We can afford to incur some debt; indeed we must do so, if we are to avoid an economic apocalypse. As long as the spending is "wise," and "targeted," and as long as the resulting deficit is "cyclical" and not "structural," the experts tell us, it's all good.
My question (which I concede is impolite and possibly annoying when we're all about to receive new bridges, roads, hospitals, schools, community centres, hydro towers, sewage treatment plants, windmills and clay pots for our gardens) is this: Why are we doing it?

The message -end the age of unproductive entitlement-re-invent ourselves through leadership and learning how to compete- PR

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