Politics: government priorities and possibilities

Self-tutoring about politics and government: the tutor contemplates a recent poll…

The following is according to my understanding.

I got a text the other day which appears to be a poll from the provincial government. It asks what I think the government’s top priority should be, then gives six choices. Among them are US tariffs, cost of living, housing, healthcare, environment, and public safety.

My first thought is to congratulate the provincial government for its interest in its voters’ priorities. Looking around the world today, one can’t take that for granted.

Yet, the poll seems somewhat idealistic. For instance, can a provincial government actually deal with tariffs that have been, it seems, imposed on Canada nationally? It would be great if possible, but it seems unlikely.

Moving on to cost of living: can a government actually reduce cost of living? The only way, it seems to me, would be by reducing regulations and taxes. If the government tries to subsidize the cost of living via some program, taxes will go up more than cost of living will go down. This might not be true in every person’s case, but overall it will be. If the government uses deficit spending to fund such a program, the tax increase might be deferred, but it won’t be avoided. The reason is that the government itself costs money to run, so any action done by it will cost more than the dollar value of its potential benefit.

Next: housing, which certainly seems problematic. Yet, can the government fix it? Once again, it probably can’t be fixed by redistributing money. However, it might possibly be mitigated, somewhat, by reducing taxes and regulations involved in construction.

To healthcare, which seems something the provincial government can address: What I can say is that people I know have gained access to a family doctor over the past couple of years. Therefore, it seems the government is moving in the right direction on that front.

After healthcare, environment was mentioned. That’s a tricky issue, perhaps especially in BC. Taxes to run the government have to come from some productive industry. Moreover, life in BC seems to include, on average, a fair amount of driving. Therefore, one might suspect that, for now, voters are satisfied with the government’s environmental efforts.

The final issue mentioned is public safety. In terms of life and limb, I’ve always felt safe in BC.

Conspicuously absent from the choices, it seems, is deficit reduction, which probably should be any government’s top priority until its deficit is zero.

One important idea, to my mind, is that a provincial government cannot create money; rather, if it subsidizes one situation, it had to get that money from somewhere/someone else. On top of that, the government charges an expense to do so. Therefore, it seems the only way a provincial government – or, in truth, any government at all – can really make things cheaper is by reducing the money it collects.

Source:

bcbudget.gov.bc.ca

cfib-fcei.ca