Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

The $0.3 billion question

Machiavelli has nothing on these guys. Let's deconstruct for a moment the central message of today's 2011 Federal Budget, Take two: "Storm clouds are gathering in the world economy. We must rush to get our fiscal house in order, lest we be struck by another tempest. We will advance our own ambitious timetable for balancing the budget by a full year. But to do that, we must review all our programs, to find operational savings of $4 billion per year (or 5 per cent of the cost of running government). That's the kind of thing the private sector does all the time, and we will bring private sector discipline to the task."

So the budget will be balanced in 2014-15 instead of 2015-16. But wait a minute. Look back to the March version of the budget: it forecast an infinitesimal deficit of just $0.3 billion for that year. Getting that down to zero isn't actually that Herculean of a task, is it? And it certainly doesn't require $4 billion in yet-to-be-identified spending cuts.

But this got me wondering. Why on earth did the March version of the budget forecast such a small deficit for that year in the first place? $0.3 billion is about one tenth of one per cent of total revenues and spending for the government -- far lower than any reasonable measurement error, statistical rounding, or other "noise." A normal government, if they really wanted to balance the budget, would have just rounded the number to zero (or marginally adjusted one or more of the spending or revenue parameters). They thus could have claimed to be balancing the books by 2014-15 ... if that in fact matters.

Well, that budget was defeated and Canadians went to the polls. During the campaign the Conservatives issued their pledge to move forward the timetable for balance by a year. Now the budget lives up to that pledge. The strategic review process is to identify savings that will eventually deliver $4 billion per year, motivated by the desire to balance the budget a year earlier -- the rationale for which revised timetable has yet to be explained. The big debate so far has focused on the fact that the government hasn't identified the cutbacks (a point made by the opposition parties, PBO Kevin Page, and others). The Conservatives say don't worry, the review process will do that. Lost in the spin are the deeper questions, namely:

1. Why do we need to balance the budget by 2014-15 instead of 2015-16?
2. Why do we need to balance the budget at all?
3. Since the forecast 2014-15 deficit was all of $0.3 billion, why do we need a whole strategic review process and $4 billion of blood on the floor in order to eliminate it?

Full Article
Source: Rabble.ca 

No comments:

Post a Comment