10 False Assumptions of the BC NDP (and leftist parties everywhere)

1.We must “grow” our revenues

2.We need economic growth to grow our revenues or......

3.We can grow our revenues by taxing corporations and ‘making the rich pay their fair share’ or....

4.We can grow our revenues by both growing the economy and making the corporations pay more tax.

5.We can grow our limits. We can ignore the imminent loss of cheap fossil fuels and rely upon continued economic growth because miraculously, we can find alternative technology to scale up to the energy requirements of a growing economy and the superstructure of social services that rest upon it.

6.We can decouple economic and population growth from green house gas emissions.

7.Constant reductions of per capita consumption and per capita waste can offset
constant increases in total consumption that come with a growing population, ad infinitum.

8.We can nullify the ecological impact of a growing population by concentrating people into urban feed lots, by rezoning city land to increase infill housing, and by defending Greenfield acreage with strict land-use planning. We can pretend that land-use decisions are not made by local politicians who are owned by developers. And we can argue that because capitalism is bad for the environment, then by a magical feat of deductive reasoning, socialism must be better. Take away the profit motive, and institutions will work in our best interest. Case in point, the pristine, bucolic paradises of the late Soviet bloc, China, and the Sandinista regime that bought Catholic support by not instituting family planning so that the population levels could skyrocket.

9.Not only can we have infinite growth in a finite world, but infinite growth in the number of tax-payer funded services.

10.Government will always be there for you. As it was for the people of New Orleans and as it will be when our world is soon beset with a million Katrinas. Therefore, there is no reason to promote personal or community self-sufficiency. We can make people even more dependent on government than they are already. More daycare spaces. More child benefits. More funding for the arts. More subsidies for more services. Less individual responsibility. That is how elections are won. That was how the West Was Won. Pioneers got government funding and support for barn-raising, didn’t they? They must have, because without government help Canadians can’t do anything, can they? And whose fault is that? It is always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?