Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
That may be true, but it's scary. There are places in this world that used to do very well from coal and steel. And they're awful now.
That's why using the royalties from oil and gas for day-to-day financing of government services today is so foolish. It allows Albertans to have extraordinarily low taxes and buy nice cars and go on trips to Hawaii. But it does nothing to prepare us for the time when taps run dry. Twenty years from now I don't want my kids to drive on broken down roads, have crappy hospitals, and send their kids to crumbling schools because Alberta is a depressed backwater.
The money generated from oil and gas revenues should go to providing public infrastructure and services 20-40 years from now, not subsidizing consumption in one of the most high-spending jurisdictions in the world. That was the whole idea when Lougheed came up with the Heritage fund. And we've pissed it all away so every middle-class home can have a new SUV in the garage and eat out at Earl's twice a month.
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I don't think we should subsidize the operating budget with these royalties, and I think that we should pay more taxes with a consumption tax. I've argued that point in many threads here on CP, and never said otherwise.