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Originally Posted by Tinordi
For once, I'm with crazy.
It seems though like the real policy question here is why is Alberta program spending more expensive than other provinces?
I would assume that there's some gristle to trim after a party has been in power for 43 years but I'm fairly sure that that's just drops in the bucket. Is a province with high labour costs just destined to have higher per capita costs for the government to do business?
It would seem like Klein did cut back to the bone in the 90s, have all of those gains grown in again?
Would a province with big infrastructure needs from big resource projects simple have higher costs? Would a province with large net in-migration have higher per capita costs because of the transaction costs at least in the short term?
Or is it just waste and incompetence. It's a pretty pivotal question.
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If you are looking for a single answer there isn't one, we do have a well-payed public service and that is something that we need in order to a) attract qualified people to the positions and b) ensure that government employees have a certain standard of living.
We have higher costs also because we as a province have continually put things off, our urban planning is pretty horrendous (look at public transit playing catch-up). That in combination with having a booming population in the cities puts us at a disadvantage once again with having to pay high labour and material rates in order to build the services to support a growing population.
There are issues with entitlement and corruption that exist, however if anyone is thinking that is responsible for anything other than a drop in the bucket, they are burying their heads in the sand.
The other problem that I see, is if you start laying off a bunch of people, what happens to them, what are the costs associated with that. If there is reduced efficiency in the government, who bears those costs. It is a lot easier to say that they will reduce inefficiencies, it is much more difficult to say with any degree of accuracy how they will do it and what impact that it will have on the province.
I really don't think that there is a simple answer no matter what any political party would have you believe, at the end of the day though, if people are so concerned about saving for future generations, why would they not be willing to increase their personal taxation a slight degree or at least adjust the taxation to be a progressive tax, one that would actually benefit those with low income while putting a greater onus of the responsibility on those with more income.