Written by -- Kelly Biech
Prince George
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Tuesday, 01 April 2008 |
Re: Right-wing government leaning left? (Todd Whitcombe column, March 31).
Dr. Whitcombe makes some interesting points.
The current situation in B.C. has nothing to do with right-wing or left-wing politics. It has to do with what do we have to work with, what works and what doesn't work in the big scheme of things.
First, B.C. is carrying a debt of nearly $40 billion US. This translates to $2.34 billion in interest annually.
To give people an idea of what this money could have funded: student costs in B.C. work out to roughly $7,500 apiece. Dividing this into our annual interest payment of $2.34 billion represents 300,000 positions annually.
Second, with the U.S.'s economic troubles and our reduced income from forest products, the provincial government, over and above interest payments, has even less to work with.
Third, in the long run, continuous borrowing of money ends up bringing about serious troubles for the next generations of British Columbians. Thus as we are just managing to service our debt and yet still maintain most of our social services, it would be stupid to exacerbate things down the road with further borrowing.
Sweden for example, by ignoring the long-term consequences of its fiscal policies, has left a pretty dim future for its young people where its external debt is $516 billion in relation to its population of nine million.
Basically the overall picture for the average Swede is that the international financial community calls the shots and not the Swedish people or their government. It is a slippery slope which we do not wish to follow.
And last, history has shown, in the long run, free-market economies with correct incentives and legislation (protection of workers' rights, etc.) provide overall a better standard of living than so-called socialist or controlled economies.
As Robert Heilbroner (a respected economist and self-proclaimed lifelong socialist) stated in a 1989 New Yorker article, less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over. Re: the collapse of the USSR.
Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.
Thus again, some of the tough calls that are currently being made have nothing to do with left or right. It comes down to what do we have to work with, what can we afford, what will be the long-term effects of the decisions we make today.
-- Kelly Biech
Prince George
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 October 2008 )
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