Budget speech: NDP just legitimized BC Libs' fake surplus

5 posts / 0 new

Tue, 2017-09-12 23:26

jas

I don't understand the NDP affirming Christy Clark's budget surplus propaganda. They even went a step further, asserting that GDP growth was even better in 2016 than the Libs declared.

It is widely recognized that BC's economic performance is grossly skewed by the real estate market in Vancouver. Provincial revenues relative to economic growth are sharply down. Rural BC is not doing well. Christy's "surplus" was gained by forcing BC Hydro to borrow more money to pay as a dividend that it can't even remotely afford. Debt servicing will face a crisis shortly, with interest rates inching up. Other current debts and obligations are hiding in deferral accounts. BC Hydro is effectively bankrupt now, and likely will not recover. Hydro alone could sink the provincial economy.

Pundits have commented that the NDP need to aggressively expose the BC Liberals' mismanagement of the economy, and forever put to rest the myths of right-wing governments being good fiscal managers. The time is now for the NDP to be opening the books and exposing the horrors. Pretending that everything is groovy merely transfers the liability to themselves. What are they doing?

It seems to me this is a serious weakness of the left -- being too nice. The BC Liberals don't deserve nice. They deserve to be dragged through the mud. They deserve to be obliterated as a party.

The new government needs to get nasty. And quick.

Tue, 2017-09-12 23:51

bekayne

jas wrote:

Pundits have commented that the NDP need to aggressively expose the BC Liberals' mismanagement of the economy, and forever put to rest the myths of right-wing governments being good fiscal managers. The time is now for the NDP to be opening the books and exposing the horrors. Pretending that everything is groovy merely transfers the liability to themselves. What are they doing?

"The cupboard is bare" routine only happens when an incoming government wants to cut spending.

Wed, 2017-09-13 00:02

jas

The other mistake the Left makes is assuming that because their constituents tend to be more educated and rational, that the electorate over time will see the light and also tend this way.

No. It doesn't. Conservatives understand this, and they exploit that irrationality. This is one of the first things Gordon Campbell did in 2001, start a misinformation campaign about the NDP and the province's finances. And it worked. It was still working in this last election.

It's called propaganda, and the Left has to fight back. And it can be done the principled way: using education and simple data. But that information has to get out. Don't save it for private discussions or academic journals. Pummel the electorate with it until they have to concede the facts.

The only reason a progressive party wouldn't do this is if they plan on being dishonest themselves, or if they don't believe in their own fiscal competence.

Wed, 2017-09-13 00:05

(Reply to #3) #4

jas

bekayne wrote:

"The cupboard is bare" routine only happens when an incoming government wants to cut spending.

Good point, but this isn't a 'cupboard is bare' routine. This is a 'Look folks: neo-libs and neo-cons cannot manage economies, and here is why..' information campaign.

Wed, 2017-09-13 00:55

jas

But I wonder if I just had an insight.

Perhaps the reluctance comes from the rural/urban divide. The NDP represents mostly urban ridings. And probably readers here are mostly urban or live in southern areas. You see wealth all around you so you believe the "booming economy" rhetoric.

But visit some northern and rural towns and see the shuttered storefronts; the pocked highways; the lack of services; the communities of mobile home shacks. See the empty schools; the dearth of transportation options; the declining wages; the brutalized forests; the lakes being used as tailings ponds; local work being outsourced to mobile contracting companies; the declining tourism economy; the increasingly desperate and volatile economic dependence on brute resource extraction.

Come and take a look at that and tell me that the Left should continue to be nice and polite.