November 26, 2005 There is more disturbing news about the grip of deficit and debt hysteria upon the minds of the young politically active. This past week the Metro paper distributed widely for free in Montreal's metro carried an article about the youth wings of the three leading political parties in Quebec supporting an all out campaign to eliminate deficits and reduce debt in Quebec.This deficit mania is very bad news for all of us who have witnessed and experienced the terrible consequences of cut backs in the Quebec education and health care system. In Quebec close to 650,000 people have no family doctor and are forced to rely on queueing up in health clinics often for waits of over 3 hours before they can see a general practitioner let alone a specialist.
The infrastructure in Montreal has been crumbling for years and hordes of homeless people are reduced to begging on Ste. Catherine St. despite the best efforts of many noble volunteer organizations trying to help them.
The foolishness of these neo-conservative and neo-liberal and ADQist young people in believing that salvation is possible for their generation through further slashes of public spending which can only worsen the situation is a sad spectacle.
Its time they studied a little history and the work of Keynesian economists like Abba Lerner, Gideon Rosenbluth, John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Heilbroner, Joseph Stiglitz(a Nobel prize winner) William Vickery(another Nobel prize winner , John Hotson, Mike McCracken, Jim Stanford, and a long list of other economists who share the belief that deficit cutting is best achieved through lowering the unemployment rate through a combination of low interest rates and economic stimulation. Its not accomplished except in a very damaging way through destroying our public institutions through more cut backs.
Quebec's debt situation is far from a state of crisis. Increasing the suffering among the poor and unemployed through more cutbacks can only make matters worse. Young people will inherit the debt but they will also inherit a wealth of assets both public and private. But if they neglect to protect these assets currently their inheritance will be damaged.More about this later.
My Dear Professor:
ReplyDeleteIt is always interesting, when economists convert theory into political action...
You suggest, that by slashing public spending (welfare) it makes matters worse, yet you are unwilling or unable to even entertain the strong likelihood of state sponsored dependency...
The real question I would like to pose, is whether the inherited assets excessive the liabilities? Of course, you already know my retort...