This Afternoon In Snookland...The Debt-Free Delusion.

AllTheEstablishedCredThat
FitsVille


Marvin Shaffer, of the CCPA has an interesting commentary up about the Snooklandian's 'Debt Free' fallacy.

Point one focuses on the curious inability of the puffed-up proMedia punditry's inability, even with all its 'established credibility' to see the fallacy for what it is, where it came from, and what it has led to:

...The issue, however, is not whether the promise of a debt free BC will be achieved. It won’t, at least not in my lifetime. The issue is whether it was ever a reasonable policy objective in the first place. After all, debt supports investments and long term assets, as (the VSun's Vaughn) Palmer pointed out in his curiously soft, almost apologetic (recent) commentary. If no debt means no investment in needed assets we will be making future generations worse, not better off.

I recall when Mike Harcourt was elected, the mainstream media (with Palmer at the forefront) railed against increasing government debt, with virtually no regard to the investments and assets it enabled. That anti-debt campaign had two unfortunate consequences. It caused government to cut back on capital expenditures, however needed and valuable they might be. And it encouraged government to look to ‘innovative’ off-book financing in order to reduce the reported amount of public debt. The political need to hide debt led directly to the widespread use of P3′s even if that increased, through long term contractual obligations, the liability future British Columbians would ultimately have to pay for...


And point two deals with larger, really and truly important policy matter of running up debt on mostly worthless junk while we avoid investing in things that actually matter:

...The real policy problem in this province is not that we are failing to move to a debt free B.C. The policy problem is that we are incurring debt for things we don’t need, that arguably don’t offer benefits in excess of their cost or at best are low in priority relative to other pressing demands (think Cadillac upgrade to the Sea-to-Sky highway, Smart Meters, the NW Transmission line and the retractable roof over BC Place). And at the same time we are failing to make the ones we should, for example in early education and high quality childcare, flood control and other preparation for extreme climate events, and a host of other areas....

Gosh.

Hidden debt backed with longterm liabilities driven by largesse handed out, hand over fist, to cronies while we simultaneously strangle the baby named 'public good' out back in the bathtub?

Is it possible that there are actually a few Straussian wizards hiding behind the curtains marked 'Pay-To-Play' in Snookland?



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Tip O' The (itchyscratchysummer) Toque to Norm Farrell on the Twittmachine, who is most definitely NOT an 'idiot blogger'  for pointing us back towards Mr. Shaffer's post.


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