Saturday, October 26, 2024

i don't think randomly sending everybody $200 as a "rebate" is a very responsible use of public funds. it brings to mind goofy economic ideas like social credit.

we're talking about roughly 3.5 billion dollars, which could be spent on hiring nurses or building subsidized housing. we're overseeing a historic failure in this government to deliver basic services, and the premier is talking about mailing out checks in order to starve the beast.

at the least, if you're going to mail out checks, apply some kind of progressive gradation on it so that the money goes to the people that need it. don't just send everybody $200; targeted government subsidies don't increase inflation, generally speaking, but just handing out $200 checks to everybody is an exceedingly inflationary measure.

fwiw, i would also oppose cutting taxes for middle class families. the government should be spending this money on services, not giving it back to taxpayers.

ultimately, if the government can't figure out how to spend an extra $3.5 billion dollars in the middle of an overpopulation crisis, we quite clearly need to get a new government. there's no deficit of obvious things to do with this cash. we need an infrastructure bill in ontario and we need a government that will write it.