There is precious little economic detail in the Liz Party’s platform document, but taken with her public utterings, we can get a pretty good idea of Lizonomics.
Here’s a primer.
1) Call a tax increase something else, and it doesn’t count
Liz Hanson promised small business owners she wouldn’t increase taxes, and then promptly announced her tax attack on placer miners. Of course, they are easy targets because they’re out there washing gold out of the gravel, being productive and earning their living.
Hanson promised no increase in personal taxes. She is also considering a carbon tax, which means the cost all petroleum based fuels will increase, driving up the cost of everything we buy in Yukon.
We aren’t persons?
Hanson also plans a hefty increase in hardrock mining royalties, which already are the highest in the country.
A tax increase, by any other name, smells just as putrid.
2) Give the Hanson slush fund a nice name, and maybe people won’t notice
The Liz Party’s website claims that Liz’s Yukon Resource Legacy Fund is based upon the Alberta and Alaska models. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
The Alaska fund pays dividends to all Alaskans, every year. The Alaska government is enlightened enough to trust its citizens with making their own spending decisions.
The Alberta Heritage Fund has not received resource royalties since 1987. Its investments in stocks, bonds, and other securities yield income, which is transferred to Alberta’s general revenues. A portion of the investment earnings are retained in the fund to maintain and grow the capital. That is a true legacy fund.
Liz’s fund will blow it all on her pet spending areas. No dividends, no investment income, no capital growth.
Only in Lizspeak can spending the money be taken as creating a legacy.
Why doesn’t Liz just take the royalties into general government revenue? Why doesn’t she want her spending plans to be part of the normal budgetary process? What is she trying to hide?
3) Create your own made-in-Yukon subprime mortgage crisis.
Liz will force the Yukon Housing Corporation to make low-down-payment, low-interest loans to people who don’t qualify for bank mortgages.
Banks refuse mortgage financing because the applicants are unable to meet reasonable standards for ability to repay. Liz wants to repeat exactly the same policies that created the American subprime mortgage crisis, except this time the Yukon government will be left holding the bag. Wow!
Liz’s plans are hard-line doctrinaire socialist tax and spend. Give her the reins of government and our economy will be trashed in short order.
Fortunately, we have reasonable alternatives à teams with some real world economic understanding and common sense.
George Dimsdale
Marsh Lake