Quote:
Originally Posted by fishnguy
This is unfair. And no, I didn’t vote NDP in or voted for Trudeau. Things started going downhill in the third or fourth quarter of 2013 and the **** hit the fan outright in 2014. Has nothing to do with NDP, nada. In my honest opinion, the economy would be in the toilet regardless of the party in power. And with due respect, to state otherwise is either silly or simply dishonest. Furthermore, looking at the budget that was recently released, we would be much deeper down the drain had this government taken office then. The latter part is speculation on my part, yes, but it is an educated one.
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Yes, oil prices started to decline in 2014, layoffs in Alberta's oil industry peaked in 2015 & 2016. People out of work don't pay much in income tax and combined with declining oil royalties, government revenues were in serious decline.
The sensible thing to do for the government of the day in 2015 & 16 would be to recognize this and control spending. What did the government of the day due instead? Well they continued to spend like drunken sailors and made a bad problem much worse by their irresponsible fiscal control.
To say the provinces problems had nothing (nada in your words ) to do with the NDP is false. While they couldn't be responsible for the downturn in the oil industry and declining revenue, they had total control of the other side of the balance sheet, expenses and spending.
Studies have shown that if the NDP government had exercised prudent fiscal control and stayed the course of their 2015 budget with respect to spending the provinces financial picture would look much different today.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/stud...t-still-so-big
They didn't and that's one of the main reasons they were a one term government.
Again, I'll ask the same question I asked earlier in this thread. How long is it reasonable to accept government spending that exceeds their revenue, regardless of the party in power?
Every single government that has brought forward a deficit budget has said the same thing you said. Were not spending, we're investing in the provinces future.
I've got news for you. Repeated continuous spending beyond your means is not investing in the future, it's mortgaging it. Both your future and for the generations that follow. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see the obvious.
Show me one provincial or federal government in the history of this country that's successfully been able to spend it's way into fiscal prosperity from a similarly dire deficit and debt situation this province is in.
In the words of Ralf Klein, "It's the spending stupid".