Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your weekend reading.

- Stephen Maher reminds us that the Harper government now lecturing us about the need to attack social programs because of a federal deficit is the same incompetent group that caused the deficit in the first place through reckless tax slashing and vote-buying trinkets. But then, Bruce Johnstone points out that the cost of Old Age Security (which the Cons want to cut) is lower than that of similar programs in nearly any other comparable country, while Thomas Walkom also notes that cost of OAS can easily be met by a government which isn't determined to pull the rug out from under its citizens.

- Susan Delacourt points to Martin Goldfarb's observation about the state of the Cons (which doesn't look to have changed much in the past year):

Harper is still searching for the big idea that will establish his brand promise for himself and his Conservative party.... A series of attributes unconnected to a big idea, or a brand promise, will not attract people.

And presumably we'll see that change over the next few years as the Cons face both ample time in which to define themselves, and a primary opponent which doesn't lack a coherent vision of its own.

- And no, repetition of the word "major" doesn't figure to count - though it will likely signal what the Cons ultimately select. Meanwhile, putting trade above all else probably qualifies as a brand promise, but I'm not sure the Cons will want to have to defend it against an alternative based on individual equality.

- Finally, Rafe Mair tears into Joe Oliver over his contempt for anybody concerned about the Gateway pipeline, while Marc Lee documents the odious profits that look to be paired with environmental degradation as the two main effects of having it built.

On unequalization

As usual, the Cons' latest attack on social programs - this time the Old Age Security which has played a key role in lifting Canadian seniors out of poverty - is supposedly based on some inescapable lack of fiscal capacity to provide a reasonable standard of living. But the truth is that there's a rather simple choice to be made as to what priorities to fund - and the Cons are squarely on the wrong side of it.

Let's consider the Harper spinmeisters' doomsday scenario as to what OAS might cost by 2030. The Cons' estimated total cost is about $108 billion. But based on Statistics Canada's medium-case demographic estimates, seniors ages 65 and 66 will make up only 11.5% of the total population aged 65 and up as of 2031.

So if OAS is relatively evenly applied across the age spectrum, the savings from pushing back the retirement age for Canadians in general will amount to 11.5% of $108 billion - or just over $12 billion per year.

At the same time, the Cons plan to push through general income splitting and increases to tax-free savings accounts. And those plans - targeted squarely at large-single-income households and those wealthy enough to have $10,000 to sock away every single year - will cost...just under $12 billion per year. And unlike the Cons' numbers for OAS, that's without taking into account any growth in the size of the tax base in the meantime.

So no, cutting the OAS by applying a higher retirement age isn't a matter of necessary fiscal prudence. Instead, it's half of a large-scale plan to redistribute wealth from those who make little enough to qualify for the OAS, to those who already have money to burn. And there's no way the Cons should be allowed to balance the budget on the backs of would-be retirees without answering for the fact that their goal is to hand that same money to those who need it least.

Update: Dave and Jymn have more.
[Edit: fixed wording.]