JaredMilne JaredMilne:
bootlegga bootlegga:
We're left with a Heritage Trust Fund valued at a measly $18 billion - a paltry $4 billion larger than when Lougheed left office. yes, it has grown $4 billion in 30 years!
Yet, do you think very many Albertans know or even care? Of course not - as long as our leaders keep taxes low and toss out gifts every once and a while like Ralph bucks, no health care premiums, and other giveaways, many blithely ignore their mismanagement and do the exact same in their own personal finances.
I'd like to think that we'll learn our less on this time (the 3rd or 4th boom we've pissed away), but if history is any guide, most Albertans won't.
As such, we're the architects of our own demise and we deserve every bit of scorn people want to heap on us.
We can be criticized for that, sure. But there's a difference between that and the schadenfreude that people like the commenters in the original article want to heap on us.
I don't see it that way. If this had been the first crash we experienced, then I might agree with you.
This is at least the 3rd boom we've pissed away in my lifetime (70's, natural gas bonanza until 2009, and the 2010-2014 jump in oil prices), so I feel we are plenty deserving of scorn and schadenfreude.
Each time a boom comes along, we act like degenerate gamblers, crowing about how much we're winning at the blackjack table. What's worse, many in Alberta laugh and deride everyone else for not doing the same thing. Then we cry in our beer when the streak ends and expect pity from the rest of 'family' when we're reduced to pocket change.
Many Canadians equate us with a bunch of Ralph Klein yahoos who love to act holier than thou and so it shouldn't come as much of surprise when others give us a taste of our own medicine.
I consider it nothing more than karma.
JaredMilne JaredMilne:
See, the malaise in the oilpatch doesn't just affect Albertans. Sure, it affects us the most-but it also affects other Canadians too, namely those Canadians from other parts of the country who come here for work. They make very good money, and they often send a lot of it back to their families in their home provinces. That's millions of dollars flowing into the economies of those other provinces every year, millions that are going to take a nosedive because of all the layoffs in the oilpatch. And that doesn't even touch on equalization-no, our oil revenues do not go into equalization, but the taxes we pay, generated by the jobs that are created, do.
So that's a lot of money that goes into the coffers of other provinces, and a lot of money going into the pockets of other Canadians when people who come out here to work send that money back home.
Sure other provinces get benefits from the oil industry, but let's not kid ourselves, Albertans garner most of the benefits - probably somewhere on the order of 75% or thereabouts.
JaredMilne JaredMilne:
We can be criticized for the way we've let ourselves become too dependent on one resource, and the way we've managed the revenues that actually come from it. Thoughtful Albertans have been saying many of the same things for years.
We haven't had a decent premier since Lougheed left office...
JaredMilne JaredMilne:
However, insulting us just on principle and taking pleasure in our difficulties is just as douchey as when Albertans laugh at the problems Ontario or Quebec might be facing.
What goes around, comes around...yes, I know that two wrongs don't make a right, but I certainly understand where the schadenfreude comes from.
As I said, we're the architects of our own demise.
CKA Super Elite 
CKA Super Elite 
CKA Super Elite 
