On responsibility

Brian Topp's take on the Irish disaster is well worth a read. But it's worth offering up a reminder to the converse of Topp's take on why progressives should be concerned with careful money management:

(B)eyond a certain threshold, every dollar borrowed from the markets to finance day-to-day spending by a provincial government is a step towards the disempowerment of the public and its legislature. Over-dependence on debt hands the keys of public policy to lenders and to their advisers.

Small wonder then that the press in Ireland is full of lament for the loss of that country's independence – so expensively won after so many centuries of oppression and struggle.
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The state is awash in debt (thanks in part to excessive tax cuts); the deregulated private sector has gorged itself in an orgy of speculative greed, and finally expired in a property and banking bubble; and now the working and middle class – and their children, and their grandchildren – get to pick up the tab while the winners enjoy their properties in the Grand Caymans. Nobody in Ireland stood up to the special interests. They “ran like a business.” Now the bill has come due.

These are the real stakes between those who work for moderate, prudent, incremental progressive government, moving forward within its means in the public interest, and the other side – the mouthpieces for greed and reckless irresponsibility. The shills and charlatans of the populist right, and those who fund them.

Put simply, anybody who believes that government has a useful role to play in the lives of citizens should want to make sure that it's not wasting money - both for the sake of avoiding the issues with creditors mentioned by Topp, and in order to ensure that it maximizes the amount of good that public spending actually achieves.

On the other hand, a party which believes that government action is generally illegitimate in the first place can far more easily justify reckless attacks on public finances - knowing that when the bill comes due, it will serve to ensure that the next goverment is limited in what it can do. And while we haven't yet seen quite the same excesses in Canada that resulted in the disaster in Ireland, it's well worth asking whether we can afford to keep power in the hands of parties who agree wholeheartedly with the beliefs that created such a stark cautionary tale.