Excellent column by Dan Lett today in Winnipeg's broadsheet, about the "lunacy" of cutting health and education to battle a deficit.
British Columbia's conservative Liberal government hasn't learned from history, Lett writes. "We saw what happened when we cut doctors, nurses, hospital beds and surgeries. We had longer and longer waits for procedures, overworked doctors and nurses, and ultimately bigger bills to correct all these problems."
Now, after worsening the province's fiscal problems last autumn with senseless tax cuts, the B.C. government has announced that it simply must slash funding to schools and hospitals to keep the budget deficit down.
So it goes.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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3 comments:
I will never figure out why the conservative mindset is so self-centered and short-sighted. Their attitude (both in Canada and the U.S.) is always "I've got mine,and to hell with you!"
Of course, since I don't see the world their way, the solution to this crisis seems obvious to me: rescind the tax cuts and restore the service! And then tax the conservatives 10% more for being so foolhardy and causing so many people so much problems!
What Lett doesn't say is that this could all be part of a stealth strategy for shrinking government:
1. Cut revenues.
2. "Oh, look! We have a deficit. We'll have to cut services."
3. Then, when service quality (in this case, health-care quality) predictably declines, the anti-government types can say government should get out of health care (and other services) because it's just no good at it.
... And round and round it goes.
Obama's original outlook on change we could believe in but couldn't afford was that all challenges were really masquerading as opportunities; the more insurmountable the former seemed, all the greater triumph would result when they were effectively addressed. That's what he has to follow through on: Tax the wealthy to make the rest of us healthy.
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