[Mean Mr. Mustard]

Originally Posted by crazy_eoj

First of all, let me reframe where this was coming from. Someone scoffed at the very idea of cutting spending to match tax revenue. Saying it was totally impossible. And clearly that is not true.

All I wanted to show is that it IS possible to do a 25% reduction in spending. I wouldn't necessarily recommend exactly this kind of platform, but I wanted to show it is very possible to find savings of this magnitute immediately.

Yes by gutting the public services to bare bones operations. No one should deny that it is possible to accomplish this but what people are trying to explain is that it is completely asinine to think that it is feasable in any way shape or form.

Yes you'd have to get them to agree to the cut, but Ralph Klein did exactly this during his tenure, rolling back salaries 5 %.

Costs that we are still trying to make up, Alberta has long held one of the lowest high school graduation rates in the country, I would imagine that this would have a lot to do with the lack of teachers and large class sizes. A less educated person generally makes less money, uses social services more, and contributes less to the economy.

Most of the public employees are aware they have had large salary increases compared to the private sector over the past few years. It wouldn't be unreasonable to ask them to give back to the taxpayer as well.

The wage for the average civil servant is still less than that of the average person working in the private sector. It isn't as though people are rolling in the money in the public service as people in the private sector are struggling to get by. Look at the average salary of a worker in downtown Calgary, I would bet you any amount of money that it is higher than that of the average government employee.

Yes it is unreasonable to unilaterally cut wages by the way, especially 10% that is massive. If someone asked you to cut 10% of your wage because the economy wasn't doing great I would imagine that you would quickly be looking for other work.

Huh? We already know the public service has a 4-1 manager to worker ration. Private sector is a 10-1 ratio. Why is it always so much harder to manage public employees than private ones?

Cut. The. Fat.

Can you provide some links to your numbers.

I can't find a link but last I remember their budget is close to 100 million dollars a year. Courts would do a much better job than these wasteful tribunals. Go read some posts from Ezra Levant if you want details as to why this is a worthless program. In fact, didn't he write a best selling book on the subject?

http://www.culture.alberta.ca/about/...ual-Report.pdf

Here is a link to the budget - the good thing about the government is if you are willing to sift through the documents it is fairly easy to gauge costs.

And Ezra Levant is not exactly the person I would be calling on in order to strengthen ones argument.

Not at all. Between sitting on (and being paid for) nonexistant or wasteful comittee's, pensions, and the ludicrous transition allowance. (which Redford finally axed... a good thing from her!!) It easily adds up to 100 million dollars. CTF projected amalgamating 3 cabinet portfolios would save 25 million all on its own.

Please provide some links with actual costs... just saying get rid of committees doesn't do any justice to those which actually do a lot of work and are responsible for the governments organization of policies and legislation.

Yes there was a bad committee but that doesn't mean that all committees are the same.

How much do we have to spend to keep people from getting sick and dying? No matter how much, people will ALWAYS end up getting sick and dying. Finding more efficient and effective ways to treat and deliver service makes more sense than pouring even more money into a failing system as we have been for the past 20 years.

Then put money into programs that prevent people from getting sick such as education programs, primary health initiatives and (gasp!) taxation of products which are known to cause serious health problems such as tobacco and alcohol. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, something that sometimes seems like it doesn't sink in with many people around here.