Alberta’s economic plan unstimulating

Don’t you just love the way government mangles the language when it wants to gloss over reality.

Take Finance Minister Joe Ceci — hey, and you don’t have to bring him back — and his steadfast vow not to impose “deep cuts” or “austerity” on the public service, despite Alberta being on track to record a gigantic $11-billion deficit this financial year.

Deep cuts? There haven’t been any cuts. So one can only assume, to sing along with the hit, that, in Joe’s mind, the first cut is indeed the deepest.

Then there’s that lovely phrase “stimulus spending” — a throwback to the glorious theories of John Maynard Keynes, a brilliant economist, but a man who changed his mind more often than Kim Kardashian takes selfies of her butt.

Everyone, everywhere is busily stimulating the economy. Our mayor wants it done, our premier is a devotee, and in Ottawa, good old jolly Justin Trudeau is steadfast in his desire to do his part — heck, one of his ministers is even stimulating the French photographic industry as well.

Sadly, what it actually means is politicians don’t want to do the dirty work of putting up taxes or whacking government jobs and programs, so instead, they’ll just borrow lots of money and hope sometime in the distant future will pay it back — preferably when they’re off enjoying stimulus-funded pensions.

Once in Canada, we used to stimulate the economy by increasing productivity. But that pipeline has ruptured and won’t be repaired. Nope, it’s a lot easier just borrowing billions.

Now imagine for a moment your spouse comes home to announce he or she has been given the pink slip. These days in our besieged city, that doesn’t take a fervent imagination.

Do you reply: “OK, dear, don’t worry. Let’s stimulate our household finances by jetting off to Vegas for a weekend and slapping the cost on the old credit card.”

Or maybe you’d been considering buying that lovely Lexus, only to get the boot yourself. Well, what the heck. You don’t want to be part of any austerity, so go and buy the darn thing anyhow — indeed, get the sporty model.

Sadly, it doesn’t work like that in most Calgary households.

Of course, national and provincial economies are much more complicated things, is the rebuttal to such simplicity of thought.

OK, then if this strategy of stimulus is such an obvious answer to all our current woes, then why do more and more people seem to be losing their jobs in Calgary? Oh, I see, if we didn’t stimulate, it would be even worse. Gotcha. That nice circular reasoning gets them out of a jam every time.

So now, in this financial year alone, each and every one of us Albertans should feel as stimulated as a stagette party being entertained by the Chippendales dancers. Because we’re each getting $2,557 extra spent on us in borrowed money. And to prove Christmas is indeed an annual event, we’ll be getting another similar wedge borrowed on our behalf the year after this, and then again the year after that.

Our Joe was once heard mumbling something about the budget being balanced in eight years. If indeed a week’s a long time in politics, then you’d have to dig up Albert Einstein to find out what eight years translates into.

Still, by then, the other nasty “D” word will be all the rage. Debt. Once we boasted to the world that Alberta was debt free. Those days have long gone and won’t return. And, just as things in life go in circles, so do economic cycles and the naive assumption that interest rates will always remain this low will sooner or later be exploded as hapless myth. By then, we’ll owe so much that when those rates do rise, we’ll sink.

Then again, maybe not. No doubt someone in 2024 — I’ll guarantee it won’t be our Joe — will call for some stimulus spending.

Once in Canada, we used to stimulate the economy by increasing productivity. But that pipeline has ruptured and won’t be repaired.