The 2019 federal budget, like all recent federal budgets, is a tribute to the pleasures of endless economic growth.
Indeed, so steady has the revenue gusher been— no government has ever had as much money to play with, measured in inflation-adjusted dollars per citizen — that the Liberals have been obliged to perform quite heroic feats of spending just to keep pace. Though real per capita spending is at all-time record levels, the deficit remains stubbornly below one per cent of GDP — hardly a deficit at all, really.
Indeed, they’re not even supposed to. Their impact is, first, symbolic — behold, we run deficits because we like to, whereas the previous government did so only grudgingly! — and second, to permit the government to spend more, mostly on the care and feeding of Liberal client groups. It is time, then, for the conversation to move on: from how spending is financed to what it is spent on, from the size of government to its composition, from the macro to the micro. Deficits of this size are not going to ruin us, as the opposition claims; neither would eliminating them, as the Finance minister pretends.
Perhaps one day something a little more stringent will be attempted. And perhaps this budget’s signature initiatives on training and housing, which give every impression of having been cooked up in the Prime Minister’s Office, if not in party election planning sessions, will be the subject.
RobBreakenridge Endless growth 😂