Good News! and stuff to read

The Reading List for 29 Mar 24

Photo by dominik hofbauer on Unsplash

Okay so you are getting this on Saturday and not Friday as usual.

It’s still the weekend and you can still enjoy the tidbits offered after the paywall if you are a paying subscriber. If you are not one of those insightful people, click the link and join the growing ranks.

That’s a not-so-subtle way to let you know that all the numbers are up: readers, subscribers, and certainly paying subscribers.

Welcome and thanks to all, especially those who are supporting this project financially. *Your* help makes a difference in the challenge of putting food on the table and devoting attention to this side gig that is increasingly important as other sources of commentary and analysis on this province vanish.

The Bond Papers conversion rate is double that of the average Substack. Even so while I won’t be retiring any time soon on the income from Bond Papers, that conversion rate tells me there is something strong here that very much meets a need in the community.

That community is wider than you might think. Bond Papers readers come from 17 countries. That includes 16 states in the United States and every province and territory across Canada. People are interested in what’s going on in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Second morsel: a few details to boost your understanding of the budget released last week. If you haven’t read Monday’s column, you can always read it now. The read on to these scraps.

The cost of paying interest on the public debt plus some other charges related to debt - as the government used to report these numbers in the budget - is roughly the same this year as the amount of borrowing, which is to say about $2.0 billion.

That means that everything government does will come from all its usual sources of income. Looked at that way, you get a clearer sense of where government’s cash comes from and where it spends the money.

Health care spending will top $4.3 billion in 2024. That’s 54.4% of all incomr. That’s the largest share of the budget health care has been within the past 30 years for sure and, to be honest, it’s the largest share of spending on health since before Confederation in all likelihood.

That sounds great in one sense, but 25 years ago the government knew it was spending too much of the budget on health at the expense of everything else. We need to get more efficient and more effective but we didn't and we aren't going to any time soon. We have historically spent more per person than any other province on health, bar none except maybe Alberta once in a while. So if spending more on health was the cure for any illness, we’d have been the healthiest crowd in the world a long while ago. And look, more than one former health minister has said you could pour the whole budget into the yawning maw of health bureaucracy and still the beast would burp and demand for more.

About 16% of the government’s income (other than borrowing) will go to education.

In other words, just those two departments eat up almost three dollars in every four that comes in.

Now recall that most of that money comes from sources the government cannot control. The next time the markets tighten up and the government cannot get cash, or the federal government changes transfers, or oil tanks, this province is going to be hurting like it’s 1929 all over again.

Meanwhile, everything else - roads, justice, social services and supports, environment, the legislature, and whatever isn’t housing and education - comes out of the rest, which adds up to about $2.2 billion.

That’s roughly the same amount as we borrow to pay debt expenses and since debt is climbing every year by between $1.0 and $2.0 billion, it won’t be long before debt serving and associated costs are more than everything else except health. Again. We already hit that warning marker a couple of years ago.

Housing - which is basically the housing corporation - has a budget that is a little under two percent of government income. $136 million out of $7.9 billion, in other words.

Same goes for the department responsible for oil and gas, electricity, and economic development. It’s $172 million, all up.

Budgets show the world what we value. Take those few numbers for what they are. One of them shows how little we value democracy itself. Watch for all the calls to cut the House of Assembly even more rather than give the handful of politicians we elect something more than the salary they had 15 years ago. These calls are from people who are either ignorant, maliciously anti-democratic, or both.

Remember that.

Now on to the fun stuff to read.