Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
Are we not spending the non renewable resource revenue?
If we were saving it or something, I could see excluding it, but it's hard to argue we're spending too little when we're spending nearly the same as other provinces, plus another approximately 12 billion excluded from the quote above, I assume out of bias.
That works out to over 3000 per person per year. But that money doesn't count, even though we're spending it.
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Who is arguing that Alberta is not spending enough?
The WRP stated that Alberta generates 14% more per capita income tax revenue than the Canadian average. From that statistic, the WRP then concluded that Alberta does not have a revenue problem and does not need to raise taxes (or additional revenue somehow.)
This is clearly misleading and disingenuous. Indeed, despite having an average wage that is 20% higher than the Canadian average (artificially inflated by Alberta's petro-economy), Alberta generates significantly less non-resource revenue than a province like Ontario. This is especially problematic since the majority of government costs are labour costs and therefore the cost of providing public services in Alberta is significantly higher than in a province like Ontario.
Therefore, Alberta has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, taxes that are artificially low by relying on non-renewable resource revenues. This has of course lead to a standard of living for Albertans that far exceeds the other provinces in Canada (high wages + low taxes = big screen tvs for everyone!).
The WRP seems to think that this is good policy. Perhaps many Albertans agree (I personally do not.) Fair enough. However, if the WRP does indeed think that this is good policy, then come out and say that and let's have a reasonable discussion. Don't mislead Albertans with cherry-picked statistics and totally fallacious, misleading conclusions.