Testing the limits
Governments are like two-year-old grandchildren, always testing the limits of adult patience to see how much they can get away with.
Your taxes are being raised because we have to pay off the horrendous deficit. (I wonder what Grandma will do if I pull the pots out of the cupboard?)
Your old age pension is being clawed back because you’re making more money than the average needed to sustain you in comfort. (I can pick up my teddy bear by the tail so why can’t I do the same with the cat?)
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Late season rainfall creates concern about Prairie crop quality
Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
We need more casinos because other provinces have them and are attracting away money that should be spent here to help build this province. (Laurie can stay up after 7.30, so I won’t go to bed either.)
The arguments in both cases are about on a par.
There is no doubt governments have debts but from time to time they are made to sound overwhelming to the point of disaster. As any economist can tell you, debt is part of any business or farming or government operation. Some debts are good debts and some are bad. Good debts generate economic activity and therefore income to pay them off. Bad debts accumulate because there is no similar logical reimbursement.
So when a public utility incurs a hundred million in debt, that money is recoverable from you and me through utility bills. When a government pours money into political bon-bons or a war or to people suffering crop failure or flood disaster the return is less forthcoming.
Most people know this and so government efforts to correct bad management with more taxes fall in the same category as the two-year-old’s experiment with the cat.
